[HOW TO] Create Samba User

If the Samba share you're trying to access doesn't allow guest users, you must have an Samba account. This article will show how to create a new Samba user account using the command line.

Create Samba User

Open a terminal window and run the command bellow. Replace USER with a name for your new Samba user. You'll be prompted for the password to get root privileges, then you'll be asked for a password for your new Samba user.

sudo smbpasswd -a USER

[FIX] VLC is unable to open the MRL (smb://)

When I tried to open remote video files with VLC via a Samba share I got this error message:

Your input can't be opened:
VLC is unable to open the MRL 'smb://...'

It seems that this problem is related to credentials and can be fixed by entering the credentials for the Samba share in the VLC preferences (Tools > Preferences > Input / Codecs > Access Modules > SMB Input):

Note: I only experienced this problem when accessing remote files with PCManFM.

Related Posts

Install PCManFM in Xubuntu
Add support for Samba shares to Thunar

References

VLC with Samba shares at Kubuntu Forums

Fix keyring for accessing Samba shares

If the Samba share that you are accessing is password protected, you'll be prompted to provide the login credentials for that share. It'll be given the choice for remembering the login information, so that it won't have to be entered every time the share is accessed.

However, for some reason every time the share was accessed share with nautilus, the login credentials were being asked persistently.
The way that I found to fix this was to remove the current keyring configuration:
$ rm ~/.gnome2/keyring

After that keyring behaved like it normally does: it prompts once for the credentials and stores them for later use if the 'Remember forever' option is selected.