Cannot access Debian Samba server on Windows client with option "valid users"

Question

I have samba running on Debian with two shares, a read-only one and a read/write one:

[LP-ReadOnly]
comment = LP-ReadOnly
path = /media/USBHDD1
writeable = No
create mask = 0775
directory mask = 0775
browseable = Yes
valid users = @users

[LP-Writeable]
comment = LP-Writeable
path = /media/USBHDD1
writeable = Yes
create mask = 0775
directory mask = 0775
browseable = Yes
valid users = david
force group = users

I can access both folders with the user "david" on a Mac, but I can only access the read only folder on a Windows client. The user "david" is a member of the group "users".

If I set valid users = @users on the writeable share, it works, but I only want to grant write permissions to the user "david".

Also, the server is not shown under "network" on Windows. I have to access it typing \\<local ip>. The workgroup name is the same on smb.conf and on the Windows machine.

I have no idea why it works well on Mac OS X and it doesn't work on the Windows client...

Answer 1

I finally managed to solve both problems. The issue was that the hostname is more than 15 characters long, and thus, the netbios name of samba, which is the same by default. To solve this, you have to add to the file /etc/samba/smb.conf, after the [global] label the following line:

netbios name = something-less-than-15-characters

And that's all. The shares are showing both in Mac OS X and Windows, and the permissions work as expected.