&author.jht; The term stand alone server means that the server will provide local authentication and access control for all resources that are available from it. In general this means that there will be a local user database. In more technical terms, it means that resources on the machine will either be made available in either SHARE mode or in USER mode. SHARE mode and USER mode security are documented under discussions regarding "security mode". The smb.conf configuration parameters that control security mode are: "security = user" and "security = share". No special action is needed other than to create user accounts. Stand-alone servers do NOT provide network logon services, meaning that machines that use this server do NOT perform a domain logon but instead make use only of the MS Windows logon which is local to the MS Windows workstation/server. Samba tends to blur the distinction a little in respect of what is a stand alone server. This is because the authentication database may be local or on a remote server, even if from the samba protocol perspective the samba server is NOT a member of a domain security context. Through the use of PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) and nsswitch (the name service switcher) the source of authentication may reside on another server. We would be inclined to call this the authentication server. This means that the samba server may use the local Unix/Linux system password database (/etc/passwd or /etc/shadow), may use a local smbpasswd file (/etc/samba/smbpasswd or /usr/local/samba/lib/private/smbpasswd), or may use an LDAP back end, or even via PAM and Winbind another CIFS/SMB server for authentication.