1 <samba:parameter name="username"
4 xmlns:samba="http://samba.org/common">
5 <synonym>user</synonym>
6 <synonym>users</synonym>
8 <para>Multiple users may be specified in a comma-delimited
9 list, in which case the supplied password will be tested against
10 each username in turn (left to right).</para>
12 <para>The <parameter moreinfo="none">username</parameter> line is needed only when
13 the PC is unable to supply its own username. This is the case
14 for the COREPLUS protocol or where your users have different WfWg
15 usernames to UNIX usernames. In both these cases you may also be
16 better using the \\server\share%user syntax instead.</para>
18 <para>The <parameter moreinfo="none">username</parameter> line is not a great
19 solution in many cases as it means Samba will try to validate
20 the supplied password against each of the usernames in the
21 <parameter moreinfo="none">username</parameter> line in turn. This is slow and
22 a bad idea for lots of users in case of duplicate passwords.
23 You may get timeouts or security breaches using this parameter
26 <para>Samba relies on the underlying UNIX security. This
27 parameter does not restrict who can login, it just offers hints
28 to the Samba server as to what usernames might correspond to the
29 supplied password. Users can login as whoever they please and
30 they will be able to do no more damage than if they started a
31 telnet session. The daemon runs as the user that they log in as,
32 so they cannot do anything that user cannot do.</para>
34 <para>To restrict a service to a particular set of users you
35 can use the <link linkend="VALIDUSERS"><parameter moreinfo="none">valid users
36 </parameter></link> parameter.</para>
38 <para>If any of the usernames begin with a '@' then the name
39 will be looked up first in the NIS netgroups list (if Samba
40 is compiled with netgroup support), followed by a lookup in
41 the UNIX groups database and will expand to a list of all users
42 in the group of that name.</para>
44 <para>If any of the usernames begin with a '+' then the name
45 will be looked up only in the UNIX groups database and will
46 expand to a list of all users in the group of that name.</para>
48 <para>If any of the usernames begin with a '&' then the name
49 will be looked up only in the NIS netgroups database (if Samba
50 is compiled with netgroup support) and will expand to a list
51 of all users in the netgroup group of that name.</para>
53 <para>Note that searching though a groups database can take
54 quite some time, and some clients may time out during the
57 <para>See the section <link linkend="VALIDATIONSECT">NOTE ABOUT
58 USERNAME/PASSWORD VALIDATION</link> for more information on how
59 this parameter determines access to the services.</para>
62 <value type="default"><comment>The guest account if a guest service,
63 else <empty string>.</comment></value>
65 <value type="example">fred, mary, jack, jane, @users, @pcgroup</value>