samba - Aug 1998 - Newbie to Samba

Hello all,

I'm newbie to Samba.  Please excuse me if the questions sound stupid.  I
have a few questions below and I'd greatly appreciate if someone can
provide me hints
on them.

1.  Samba keeps it own set of password in private/smbpasswd after Samba was
installed.  What's the use of those passwords?  Are they being used to
perform validation if "Password required" is specified in smb.conf for
using a particular service?
2. I believe the samba passwords are different from NIS+ passwords (we're
running Samba server on a Sparc Solaris 2.6 machine with NIS+ installed).
How can users change their Samba password from a Windows 98 client?  I know
they can change it using smbclient on an Unix box but what command should
be used to do the same thing on PC?
3. How can I configure the PC side such that all the necessary services
will be mounted (or shared) upon bootup?  I know I can write a netlogon
script on the Samba server but how can the PC access the script
automatically upon startup?  This is a PC question.  Please excuse me since
I'm not a PC expert.
4. I read from the newsgroup that I can synchronize the NIS and Samba
passwords.  Does anyone have experience synchronizing NIS+ and Samba
passwords?  Again, what command should be issued on the PC side to do that?

Thank you all for your attention.  Your help is greatly appreciated.

Sandie
Unix Administrator
Points North Digital Tech.

> 1.  Samba keeps it own set of password in private/smbpasswd after Samba was
> installed.  What's the use of those passwords?  Are they being used to
> perform validation if "Password required" is specified in
smb.conf for
> using a particular service?
They are used if you are using enctypted password for NT or win98. If 
you are not using them, you don't need that file. See ENCRYPTION.TXT

Christian