No subject

this is the job of the wrapper script or not and if there any disadvantage
in implementing this I'll leave to others to decide.

Maybe a warning message during the smbfs package upgrade is needed... do
people ever read those warning messages? ;-)

>> Note - in my case, the same machine is smb client and server. However,
>> without "security = share" a windows pc on the same subnet is unable to
>> see the shares either. The windows user is prompted for a username and
>> password. So it looks like a server problem to me.
>
> Right, it's a server problem in a sense; see the "map to guest" option in
> smb.conf(5), you probably want (at least) map to guest = bad user.

For me the solution was a little more complicated...

When I first installed samba I did almost the minimum changes from default...
 - choose workgroup name
 - choose encypt passwords = yes
 - some unnecessary parameters removed
 - some unnecessary shares removed
 - new shares defined.

So I ended up with smb.conf like this...

[global]
   workgroup = samba
   server string = %h server
   dns proxy = no
   log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
   max log size = 1000
   syslog = 0
   panic action = /usr/share/samba/panic-action %d
   security = user
   encrypt passwords = true
   passdb backend = tdbsam
   obey pam restrictions = yes
   guest account = nobody
   invalid users = root

[cdrom]
   comment = Samba server CD-ROM
   path = /cdrom
   writable = no
   locking = no
   public = yes

The following three methods all worked (allowed mount -f cifs)...
A. start with the smb.conf above and change "security = share"
      - but not a good option in many cases.
B. start with smb.conf above and add "map to guest = bad password"
      - also not a good option according to smb.conf man page.
C. start with smb.conf above and comment out "passdb backend = tdbsam"
    and add "map to guest = bad user"

Simply adding "map to guest = bad user" didn't work on it's own, unless I
removed/commented out "passdb backend = tdbsam" (default is smbpasswd).
Removing "encrypt passwords = true" option didn't help either.

Finally I did one more test...
1. stop samba
2. edit smb.conf above and use options
      security = user
      passdb backend = tdbsam
      map to guest = bad user
3. move/remove all /var/lib/samba/*.tdb files.
4. start samba.

When samba starts it recreates all the /var/lib/samba/*.tdb files. Now I
can mount with "mount.cifs //server/share /mnt -o guest", even though I'm
back to using "passdb backend = tdbsam".

I'm not sure what was happening there... but it's worth noting that for
some people, the "map to guest = bad user" option will not be enough on
it's own.

Best Regards
Alex Jenner