Worked in version 3.0.10: Directories mounted as user "rommel" via encfs/FUSE can only be accessed as the user mounting the directory. The check in source/smbd/service.c in make_connection_snum worked then. In version 3.0.14 (Fedora Core 4) and 3.0.21 (latest release) the smbd refuses with the error message: [2006/02/01 21:54:04, 0] smbd/service.c:make_connection_snum(615) '/var/promo' does not exist or is not a directory, when connecting to [promo] I feel samba should cater for setups, where root cannot access a directory but the userid that smbd switches to later in the connection setup can.
Maybe later. In the meantime, Samba will continue to rely upon posix file system semantics and the abaility of root to be able to stat any file/directory.