Got it solved. In the beginning I had security = user. That's the default. I couldn't even see my shares with that setting and I didn't think about the implications of that. So I changed it to the more familiar security = share which worked partially but as you see from this thread not exactly how I wanted. So what I ended up doing was this: Had to first add valid Linux accounts. I learned that in order to add samba users as was suggested earlier I had to first add them as valid Linux users. Someone I think mentioned that. After doing this I was able to do that smbpasswd -a thing so that I now had valid users. However, it still was not allowing me to write to it no matter what I tried. The final key was this. I had to set the security level back to user. The reason things failed before when I had it like this was probably because I didn't have things set up properly and although share level security worked it didn't work the way I wanted. So right now I can log into the share and map to it and write to it. The only trouble is that if I'm on another computer it won't even list that share in the workgroup display. I can still log into the server and then see the share and map but I'm going to try and set it up so everyone can see the shares and map to them but only Administrator can write to it. I may just leave it like this and add users. That might be the simplest. -- "We should have a way of telling people they have bad breath without hurting their feelings. Like: Well I'm bored. Let's go brush our teeth. Or, I've got to make a phone call...hold this gum in your mouth.
