I've still not quite got things right. I'm running FC3 with Samba v 3.0.14a, and I'm trying to implement Example 2.4 from JHT's 2004 ed. of Samba-3 by Example. I have lserver1 as my Linux box and jupiter (user annlee) and mustelidae (ehines) as Win2k boxes. ehines has access to his share (path /archive/ehines (/archive/%U in smb.conf)), but annlee does not to her share (/archive/annlee). If I add annlee as a valid user to master, though, she does have access. Without annlee as a valid user of share master, then when she tries to access her share from jupiter, she gets a dialog box inviting her to log in, and this fails ("Incorrect password or unknown user name"). Both user annlee and her UNIX password exist identically in smbpasswd and passwd--I was most careful about this, and she gets in without being invited to log in when annlee is a valid user of master. Further, when she gets the login failure and ehines attempts to login with his password, he gets, correctly, an access denied message. The problem with this last is that whenever annlee attempts to get into her share anytime after ehines' failed login, she gets the access denied message directly, without even the intervening login dialog. jupiter must be rebooted to clear this. I've run the diagnostics, et al., from the Terpstra and Vernooij Samba HOWTO book with the following results: nmbd, smbd, and winbindd are all running, and all the nmblookups work correctly (per the Samba Checklist). getent passwd ehines (or annlee) work correctly. testparm says my smb.conf is syntactically correct. the logs don't indicate any error that I can recognize with my neophyte eyes (log.smbd does say that, as lserver1 booted up nsswitch/winbindd had a missing/invalid idmap uid range and winbidd exited, but this seems to have cleared, as winbindd is running under two processes per ps; nsswitch/winbindd couldn't init idmap and did a netlogon proxy only; and nsswitch/winbindd could not fetch the sid for the domain ASTRA_ENT (the name of the workgroup of this little LAN and the name entered into smb.conf). And log.smbd immediately after the above shows jupiter connecting to service master as annlee (those times after when I had user annlee as a valid user of master). this log, however, is silent on the failed attempts when annlee was not a valid user of master. log.winbindd shows no errors at all, including, in particular the errors mentioned above in log.smbd. The time stamp on winbindd's successful start is the same as that for the above errors. It would seem that the above errors are normal start-up errors that get cleared as enough "stuff" comes up that winbindd can, in fact, effect a normal start. smbclient //lserver1/master works for both users ehines and annlee; however, smbclient //lserver1/files and smbclient //lserver1/master/files both fail with "tree connect failed: NT_STATUS_ACCESS_DENIED" and "tree connect failed: NT_STATUS_BAD_NETWORK_NAME" errors, respectively. I don't have mixed case passwords, I have run smbpasswd -s username (and correctly), and, as I said above, testparm checks smb.conf OK. I'm using shadow passwords on the UNIX side, but I believe this is operating correctly in smbd as annlee is able to get into her share (under master--nobody can get into files, for some reason) when she's a valid user of master. The valid users config is set up correctly as far as I can tell--it matches the example--it at least seems "partially correct" as, again, when she's a valid user of master, she can get into her share OK. net view works from both PCs, as does net use \\lserver1\master. However, when I try ...\files or ...\master\files, I get access denied (for any user) and network path not found, respectively. I've run ethereal to capture the two PCs booting up and joining the network after lserver1 has already been up, and a network engineer sees nothing untoward in the capture and no essential differences between mustelidae and jupiter as they join the network. The essential parts of my smb.conf follow. I apologize for the long post. Eric Hines # Samba config file created using SWAT # from 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1) # Date: 2005/04/30 10:18:53 # Global parameters [global] workgroup = ASTRA_ENT log file = /var/log/samba/log.smbd max log size = 500 socket options = TCP_NODELAY SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192 printcap name = /etc/printcap show add printer wizard = No ldap ssl = no [files] comment = The actual backups path = /archive/%U valid users = %S read only = No [master] comment = Master work area path = /archive valid users = ehines, annlee read only = No