[Samba] smbpasswd not working

[John Tate]

When I used smbpasswd it gives me the following error...
root at hayek:~# smbpasswd john
New SMB password:
Retype new SMB password:
Failed to find entry for user john.

This is despite the existence of the user
root at hayek:~# cat /etc/samba/smbpasswd
#
# SMB password file.
#
nobody:65534:XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX:XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX:[U
]:LCT-00000000:nobody
john:1000:XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX:XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX:[U
]:LCT-00000000:John Tate,,,

I do not understand what is going on. I really need to get this working.

John Tate

-- 
www.johntate.org