Windows/Linux Networking Problems
 

This is my third attempt over the last few years to get Linux to do what I want. I have only two steps left and I'll be happy. One is to get a movie player to work and the other is the subject of this post:

I have a Linux box running FC7 and the Gnome desktop, which is connected to a router and then onto two Windows boxes. Internet is fine and I can see my Windows shares (samba running). I have also manged to map to my printer on one of the Windows boxes, But I cannot map my Linux share onto the Windows box. I have set up the shared directory and turned off the firewall (just in case) but it still cannot be seen from the Windows network.

When I have previously tried setting this configuration, this was the easy part.

Even though I became quite adept at using a terminal window on my previous visits to Linux, I would prefer to avoid it this time round and use either Gnome of KDE desktop to achieve the same objective.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Ignore my signature. It's out of date.

Okay so first we'll look at your networking problem. I just recently configured my windows & linux box to share files so I could help you out with this one. I don't use gnome so I'm not sure if you'll have these same apps that I'll discuss.

First hop on terminal and type system-config-samba and hit enter. Should prompt for root pass. Make sure your share is visible here if not add it. Open the properties for the share and make sure "Writable" & "Visible" checkboxes are checked. I'm not too sure if this is required, but I created a user on my linux box with the same name and capitalization as on my windows box. I'd suggest doing the same as this is the only way I can describe it. Take the time right now to create that user. So if on Windows username is foo, then on linux in terminal `/usr/sbin/useradd -m foo` without hyphens.

So while here in your share's property window click the Access tab and scroll down and choose the user you created. Hit ok. Now choose preferences from menu at top and choose "Server Settings". Make sure the same workgroup your windows box is using is entered here. Make sure "Authentication Mode" is set to User and the rest can be left as is. Hit ok again. Now from terminal type /etc/init.d/smb restart . This will restart the samba service, if you wanted to do this from GUI you could open the Services Control panel in Gnome and restart smb from there. Give it a few minutes or reboot your windows pc.

Now try to view the Network Neighborhood in Windows and you should see the share. Oh, at the same time you need to make sure file and printer sharing is turned on in windows. Give this a shot and let me know how things go and if we need to work a little further.