Ubuntu samba share no longer accessible - The group name could not be found

**ssjwolf** · July 15th, 2008

Hi,

I set up some samba shares on my Ubuntu box using this great guide http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=202605, and they were working superbly until recently. I can no longer access my shares on my Ubuntu box from my Windows boxes and this error pops up "The group name could not be found". I haven't made any changes to the samba shares or network setup since I set it up. Accessing shares on my Windows boxes from the Ubuntu box still works fine. Any ideas?

Thanks for the assistance, much appreciated!

**Jay_R** · July 15th, 2008

I have the same problem, and it started just now too. Samba is a timebomb?

Syslog says

create_builtin_users: Failed to create Users

EDIT -- commenting out force user and force group in smb.conf worked like a charm. I'm stumped.

Example:

[Music]
path = /media/misc/Music
browseable = yes
read only = no
guest ok = yes
create mask = 0755
directory mask = 0755
# force user = <snipped>
# force group = <snipped>

**paulsdavies** · July 30th, 2008

I also had samba shares working for ages, and then they stopped working a little while ago. Like the post above, commenting out the force user and force group lines in smb.conf solved the problem.

**crimson30** · October 18th, 2008

Commenting out worked for me.

THANK YOU!

**ub-newbie** · November 29th, 2008

Worked here also. Went into /etc/samba, then opened smb.conf with "gksu gedit" and made the change. Restarted samba with "sudo /etc/init.d/samba stop" then "sudo /etc/init.d/samba start". I saw results immediately. Thanks for the tip.

**Utemetsu** · March 22nd, 2009

Thanks so much for the help. Been Stumped for days!

I can't remember how many times i've combed the samba file to figure it all out. Much apprieciated!

Cheers,
Utemetsu

**jimnz111** · March 29th, 2009

I did an upgrade to latest ubuntu distro (from 8.04 to 8.10) and Samba was updated to 3.23 which fixed issue.

It shows as BUG 5696 fix http://samba.org/samba/history/samba-3.2.2.html, but look out! Me thinks between 3.23 and 3.32 it will break again because the 3.32 release shows BUG 6155 http://samba.org/samba/history/samba-3.3.2.html fixed...