[Samba] smbclient - best way to hide the password?

[mwestern at sola.com.au]

Hi All,
I"ve written a web page to show the status of a few smb servers using
smbclient with a little bar graph etc.    to get the good stuff to parse
i've done a:

$driveusage=`smbclient $servers[$cur] -U username%password -c 'dir'`;  

now i want to hid the username and password in the best way possible.  i
read the man page and i see that i can only do it on the CL, or with the -A
option.   -A isn't too bad, but it still means a password must be clear text
somewhere on the system.  

i want to eliminate this clear text password file if possible.   i've tried
adding a user/password the same on the linux box hosting the php so it has a
chance to go straight through but it still requires the password.

any brilliant ideas oh gurus?  :)

ta
Matt