This is a common problem when the groupadd is called directly by the Samba interface script for the add group script in the smb.conf file.

The most common cause of failure is an attempt to add an MS Windows group account that has an uppercase character and/or a space character in it.

There are three possible workarounds. First, use only group names that comply with the limitations of the UNIX/Linux groupadd system tool. Second, it involves the use of the script mentioned earlier in this chapter, and third is the option is to manually create a UNIX/Linux group account that can substitute for the MS Windows group name, then use the procedure listed above to map that group to the MS Windows group.