[Samba] How does the "guest account" param work?

[Michael Heydon]

Kyle wrote:
> Thanks to all who responded. A combination of mails helped answer most 
> questions. I had _completely_ missed the 'map to guest' param. So now 
> I can log on to a share as a guest with no passwd.
>
> However, I have to know the share I want to log onto. I am still 
> unable to browse the WORKGROUP itself.
>
> Am I wrong in this?
Theoretically this should all just happen automatically, in the real 
world the broadcast method of finding hosts and workgroups is pretty 
flakey. MS worked around this by creating WINS, which is sort of like 
DNS for SMB. All MS servers since way back when have handed out WINS 
settings via DHCP out of the box. Under *nix, you need to tell your DHCP 
server to hand out a WINS server (or specify it on each machine manually).

On an unrelated note, your smb.conf is overly complex, you are 
specifying a lot of settings where the defaults are most likely entirely 
suitable. You might find it easier in the long term to start over again 
with the standard config that ships with samba and only add settings 
that you actually need. (e.g. messing with buffer settings has been 
depreciated for quite some years).



*Michael Heydon - IT Administrator *
michaelh at jaswin.com.au <mailto:michaelh at jaswin.com.au>