By the way, I tried the same thing in SUSE Linux 10.0 and it worked fine. There must be something in Fedora Core 5 that's messed up. I'll research into it and let the forum know what I find.
I just figured this out myself 5 mins ago...it's been a problem for years, but not serious enough that I'd spent any time on it.
Start with share level access first, then work your way up to user level.
security = share
guest account = root
My problem was that I didn't define who the guest account was impersonating. Put in a
in your smb.conf and you'd be headed in the right direction (of course, use a different account once you get it working).
Basically, get your samba wide open, make sure it works, then start closing up the security.