Actually, it helps (IMHO) a lot (and avoids kludges) to have at least a minimal Debian "installation" (either on the Empeg directly, or on an NFS server). I say Debian because pre-compiled ARM packages for it are readily available. Then it's not necessary to keep coming up with missing libraries, files and devices, etc.
I didn't have to do anything special other than the steps mentioned below (nothing at all to the Samba source/package) to get it up and running. To do it this way:
[1]
Get a minimal Debian file-system up and chroot into it.
[2] Recompile (or download) a kernel that has stuff that you want,
plus System V IPC.
[3] Install the Samba package.
That should be it.
Regards
Amit