samba and virtual users (no local accounts)

[Craig White]

On Mon, 2008-07-07 at 01:15 +0000, redhatdude at bellsouth.net wrote:
> -------------- Original message ----------------------
> From: Craig White <craigwhite at azapple.com>
> >
> > On Mon, 2008-07-07 at 01:01 +0000, redhatdude at bellsouth.net wrote:
> > > 
> > > -------------- Original message ----------------------
> > > From: redhatdude at bellsouth.net
> > > >
> > > > Hello,
> > > Is it possible to create a smb user without having to create a system user for 
> > > > it?
> > > Using the command smbpasswd -a NewUser fails with error: Failed to modify 
> > > > password entry for user NewUser.
> > I entered "encrypt password = yes" and "smb passwd file = 
> > /etc/samba/smbpasswd" 
> > > > in my smb.conf and still doesn't work.
> > > > Anyone knows the answer? Please help.
> > > > EJ
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > Ur?!!! Help, anybody?
> > ----
> > No - a samba user MUST be a posix user also.
> > 
> > Craig
> > 
> 
> Thanks for replying Craig.
> So what's the best approach if I need a lot of smb accounts and I don't want to clutter my /home partition with users' home folders?
----
create users with /dev/null as their home directory
or
create users with /home/samba/homes as their home directory (obviously
this must exist)
or
'map' users with /etc/samba/smbusers (I don't generally recommend this)

Craig