Please tell me more about your DHCP/DNS server… Does it set any special DHCP option, like WINS server? Is it a Samba server that runs nmbd?
As @ctek suggests, I think NetBIOS plays an important part here. I guess the “NETH” workgroup name can be resolved by NetBIOS calls only. DNS does not have any knowledge of it.
I need some time to investigate this, though.
It’s a gateway utm, untangle, debian, dnsmasq. There’s no wins server or additional settings, it’s all mbrowser elected. This network is a simple, flat lan for a small business, one of my primary clients, with enough hardware to allow me to run testing.
I’m getting the impression this is getting out of hand.
It’s pretty simple in my simple mind.
I can drop NS 6.8 anywhere and just share files with samba accessed using win and linux desktop gui dialogs (ie; nautilus).
That initially didn’t appear to be the case with NS 7, but it appears something was just ‘not right’ with the particular beta install but now it seems to be allowing all kinds of different clients to access pwd protected shares even though they’re not part of the ad domain. So, as near as I can tell, just like the zentyal server here that’s serving shares right now running samba 4, NS 7 will do the same. Logging on the other hand… well, I think I need to install samba audit for share access level logging.
I, through word of mouth, am approached by small business and true non-profits that have built their orgs on machines bought at the local store based on need, most of the time these are win home machines. When they come to me, I don’t want to rule out NS 7 just because… like one poster here said, MS says you can’t do that… or, it’s not the ideal to spec network, having to tell these people, 'well, I can’t use NS 7 unless you’re willing to spend the money to upgrade all your machines to AD compliant OS’s", won’t fly very well. I can get them up to date over time, and this network I’m testing in is the perfect example, I only have 3 win home machines left here because I’ve been steadily upgrading them over the years.
So, if NS 7 isn’t going to be offered allowing access to password protected shares to non AD compliant clients, I just need to know you’re not going that direction so I can focus on other solutions for my clients.
Well, I believe smbclient is non AD-compliant enough! If it can access a Samba share in a NS7 file server, I think we can also make it work for Win home edition. Keep on testing it!
So… I just logged into a share from the win vista home machine after upgrading to ns7rc1… navigating to the server in explorer using the hostname. @davidep
The Mistery of NetBIOS 
There’s still tomorrow.
Hi @fasttech, how is it going on with that mixed clients environment? Did you tried the latest samba acl/homedir bugfixes?
rc2’s going to be released soon, I hope it works well!
@davidep I have not been able to put a large enough block of time together to run through all this.