How to allow guest access in SAMBA

In order to set up guest access in Samba, you need to set up a user that it will pretend to log in as. So, let's say you want to share files on /mnt/somepartition/files publically. Your configuration might look like this:

[public_files]
    comment = Public files
    path = /mnt/somepartition/files
    browsable = yes
    guest ok = yes
    writable = yes
    guest account = someusername
    create mask = 0775
    directory mask = 0755

What this saying is "Create a samba share on \mymachine\public_files that is viewable to anonymous users (not hidden like user files generally are) and enable it for write access. Anonymous users can access this share by using someusername's credentials. When files are created, make them globally executable but restrict write access globally. When directories are created, make them globally executable but only writable by someusername."

Once this is done, you will need to create a smbpassword, per your question. To do this, ensure first that the user exists within your server. If the user doesn't, create it:

sudo adduser someusername

Once the user exists, create a samba login:

sudo smbpasswd -a someusername

A couple of things to keep in mind: the directory that public_files points to will need to be READ accessible to someusername. Make sure you set the permissions correctly. If the directory is owned by you but still want to make them available, add someusername to a common group and then change the group ownership.