samba - Jun 2007 - test share works, but homes returns with "network name cannot be found

I just encountered the same problem and solved it (with the help of 
Google).  SELinix was preventing samba to work as I wanted.   Here is a 
way to check if this is the problem, and to fix it:
- run the program system-config-securitylevel
- click on the "SELinix" tab
- if it says "enforcing"
  - either turn off SELinix by changing "enforcing" to
"disabled"
  - or click on "modify SELinix Policy", "Samba", and
"Allow Samba to
share users home directories"
- kill your current smbd and nmbd processes
- service smb restart

With luck, samba will be running as you wanted.