Comments (13)

1. October 20, 2007
   Atomicron

   Thanks for this tip. I was trying to get Mac OS 10.4.something to access a samba share on my Ubuntu file server and this did the trick. One small detail to note is that /etc/samba/smbusers file did not exist on my system (feisty fawn). However, just creating the file is the designated directory was all I had to do.

2. October 26, 2007
   Arvind

   I have no success with this method. I have installed Samba on a Debian Linux box and trying to connect from a Windows XP professional box. On the Windows box I have logged on using my corporate domain account. I created an /etc/samba/smbusers file and tried with both username= “domain\windows username” and username = “windows username”. It always prompts me for an username/password box. Am I missing something here ? Thanks.

3. May 15, 2008
   Roberto

   Thanks!

4. September 19, 2008
   stabbim

   Sweet, that worked. Like Atomicron, I had no file at /etc/samba/smbusers, but that was apparently not necessary for me. Just running the smbpasswd command was enough to get the user access.

   I assume the difference is just due to newer versions of Ubuntu/Samba, as this was originally posted over a year and a half ago. :)

5. September 21, 2008
   sathish

   Hi,

   I need to create multiple user in samba server not one by one, At the same time have to create multiple user. how to create this??

6. November 22, 2008
   Bob

   I am running Samba on Xubuntu, and your method did not work for me. Here is what I had to do:
   (in curlies are variables you must change for your own setup)

   sudo useradd -s /bin/true (user-name) | this creates the user
   sudo smbpasswd -L -a (user-name) | this will prompt you for a password
   sudo smbpasswd -L -e (username) | this enables the user

   –and then to verify–
   smbclient -L (your server name) -U(user you created)

   –I didn’t create these steps, I just copied them from other sources and they worked for me on Xubuntu–

7. February 21, 2009
   nbensa

   I’m sorry, but your “howto” won’t work. Samba needs a unix user!

   $ sudo adduser blah
   $ sudo smbpasswd -a blah

   Is the correct way. If you run a ldap backend, you can run:

   $ sudo smbldap-useradd -a blah -P

   and smbldap-tool will take care of unix user creation.

8. March 22, 2009
   james

   Thanks…this was the simplest solution to the problem. I always seem to forget how to do this when I reformat and this was very concise and direct to the point. Thanks!

9. April 28, 2009
   Al

   I disagree with James, Bobs instructions worked great.
   I did not create and Linux\Unix accounts.
   Created samba users as follows and accessed the shares from Windws Xp clients.

   sudo useradd -s /bin/true (user-name) | this creates the user
   sudo smbpasswd -L -a (user-name) | this will prompt you for a password
   sudo smbpasswd -L -e (username) | this enables the user

   –and then to verify–
   smbclient -L (your server name) -U(user you created)

   All created samba user accounts were also accessable from webmin Web GUI console.

10. August 7, 2009
    MilanK

    Al: you should learn that “useradd” creates a _linux_ account (user), not the samba one.

    The only difference to a regular user is that its shell is set to /bin/true (i.e. no shell, the command would just return “true” return code) and therefore such a linux user cannot login on console/GMD/KDM/SSH… Also, even that the user is added /etc/passwords, its home directory is not created.

11. November 1, 2010
    Najum

    Now all read this, since I explained more the following commands, because a Unix user is needed & most of you are thinking a Unix user is not needed. Seems like those who dont know that didnt even know Linux enough to figure out what “useradd” is doing here.

    #############################################
    sudo useradd -s /bin/true (user-name) | this creates the (UNIX) user not samba user
    sudo smbpasswd -L -a (user-name) | this will prompt you for a password (-a means add the existing Unix user to Samba password Data base).
    sudo smbpasswd -L -e (username) | this enables the user

    �and then to verify�
    smbclient -L (your server name) -U(user you created)
    ############################################
    All created samba user accounts were also accessable from webmin Web GUI console.

12. November 11, 2010
    chris

    Thanks!

13. February 9, 2011
    shirish s

    Hi,
    I followed the given steps but still it dod not work.
    I think in some cases if it does not work then we need to add the below in the /etc/samba/smb.conf

    [username]
    path = /home/username
    guest ok = yes
    browseable = yes
    available = yes
    writable = yes
    public = yes