First off, I am a total Linux neophyte. I did my first install 4 days ago, so be gentle. After cycling through a few distros, I finally ended up with Redhat 9 (Shrike). If there is a better distro for this purpose, please tell me. I attempted to contact Redhat support, but they told me to come here, since they no longer support 9.

I am installing this with the objective of connecting to an existing Windows 2k3 SBS using rdesktop. The purpose is to allow a non-profit to avoid the cost of additional hardware and XP licenses.

I have had no real issues getting onto the Terminal server's desktop using rdesktop, so good deal so far. I can also print from that desktop if I have installed the printer previously in Windows.

Where I am encountering issues is with network printers and browsing the network.

The Windows network is not seeing the Linux machines, although I can ping them.

Conversely, the Linux machines are unable to see the windows shared printers, although they can see shared folders.

I'm also unsure of how to properly configure these machines network names. I have attempted to name them in the Network configuration panel, but the result is an error on startup every time.

I have a total of ten machines to get set up and configured, so any assistance would be hugely appreciated.

Thanks for taking the time to read through this!

These issues are completely related to one subsystem, samba.

The place to begin is at http://www.samba.org and any related sites.

As I read your posts, you're having no trouble connecting to the Windows machines using Microsoft Terminal Server and its Unix/Linux client, rdesktop. That's good, and that's pretty typical ... and that's not your problem.

(Notice what I just said there! If you want to connect to a Windows machine from a Linux machine as a Windows terminal-session, then ...

• rdesktop is your client-program, functionally-equivalent to Microsoft's version of the same thing.
• The session you get is Windows' own and plays by Win-duhs' rules.
• (Heh, heh...) yes, you will still pay a license-fee to Microsloth for every connection! Microstuff's server doesn't really care who the client-program is...
• All of this has nothing to do with the unrelated issue that "Linux machines do not show up in the network neighborhood" as viewed by a Windows user.
• Two separate issues, two separate subsystems. One is terminal server and its Linux client, rdesktop. The other is Windows file-sharing and its Linux server, Samba.
• do {reReadTheseBulletPoints()} while (not crystal_clear)

Your problem is that the Linux machines do not appear on the Windows network. And the tool that would do this, running on the Linux machines, is Samba.

Samba actually consists of two "daemons": smbd and nmbd. Both of these processes should be running. The first logical question, of course, is... are they? (root: /sbin/service smb status.)

Samba will almost-certainly have to be "configured" to know how to properly work within your network, using configuration-files that are probably in /etc/samba. And with that being said, I'd like to redirect your attention to the aforementioned Samba web-site. Also, there is a very nice book on the subject that is published by O'Reilly.

I'm not giving you the ol' "rt*m brush-off" here, not at all. But here is where you are going to have to do some "reading and thinking" to decide just how you want to configure your system. Samba works, and it works very well. Your distribution should already have a suitably-up-to-date version of it.