[Samba] Unable to Login as Guest to Protected Share

[Mckenzie Ebert]

Samba Team Members,

I work with a company that sells sensors that use Samba as a way to
transfer files from the sensors to our clients computers. The sensors run
petalinux, and the Samba version used is 4.8.4. We do not monitor what
version of Windows our customers run, although the majority is Windows 10.
In the past we have simply set all shares to public and used the guest
account with no issues. However, lately some customers are unable to access
guest shares due to regulations set by their employer's (they are not
allowed to change the anonymous access policy). Because of this it was
decided to have a "backup" user that could be used as a credentialed sign
in, with a username and password that we would provide to the customer. The
desired behavior would be that Windows prompts for credentials upon
attempting to access a share, at which time either the valid user
credentials could be input or it could be left blank, resulting in the
guest account being used instead. Both of these would be given the same
access rights. However, I have not been able to replicate this behavior,
nor have I found anything online that might assist in figuring out how to
set this up. Does anyone know if this behavior is even possible, and if so
what the configuration for that looks like?

Regards,
Mckenzie Ebert