found the answer. Problem was permissions on the /var/hda/files/drives level
found out that apache couldn't access the files. Set to 777 and everything started working.

I can only see the directories on my Samba shares, not the files. I had a failing primary disk and just replaced it. To replace it, I created the same structure on a new disk, copied over everyting with "cp -a", fixed the boot and swapped disks. But I have no idea if this caused the issue ...

Small improvement to mount_shares_locally. Add the following line after the sleep 10:

/usr/bin/testparm -s 2>/dev/null | grep -oE "Greyhole Trash|Greyhole Attic|Greyhole Recycle Bin" | xargs -d "\n" mkdir -p

Will also create the appropriate Trash folder if you have it enabled