Comments on: Create a Samba User on Ubuntu

By: MilanK

MilanK — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 19:32:34 +0000

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.

By: Al

Al — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:03:09 +0000

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.

By: james

james — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 10:11:54 +0000

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!

By: nbensa

nbensa — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 01:27:02 +0000

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.

By: Bob

Bob — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 18:45:22 +0000

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–

By: sathish

sathish — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 06:30:27 +0000

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??

By: stabbim

stabbim — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 03:55:37 +0000

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.

By: Roberto

Roberto — Thu, 15 May 2008 19:53:40 +0000

Thanks!

By: Arvind

Arvind — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 16:37:58 +0000

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.

By: Atomicron

Atomicron — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 23:57:06 +0000

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.