I have a handfull of NT machines on my network and I am the only Linux machine. I have a watered down, no-security smb.conf that lets everyone on my network see the pub folder. I can ping other PCs as well as view the NT domain. Why is it that when I do 'smbclient -M ip message' it doesn't work? According to the smbclient man page it's supposed to send a winpopup message. I get "Session request failed". What am I doing wrong?

how about
echo "test" | smbclient -M ip
?

You can even change the name of who it's coming from.. Have some fun with your co-workers, I occasionally do

# smbclient -U joe@joe.com -M peecee
added interface ip=192.168.1.3 bcast=192.168.1.255 nmask=255.255.255.0
Got a positive name query response from 192.168.1.2 ( 192.168.1.2 )
Connected. Type your message, ending it with a Control-D
asdf
asdf
sent 12 bytes


In this example "peecee" is the netbios name of a Windows PC. It got a winpopup message from "joe@joe.com". I typed the CTRL-D after the second asdf which you don't see here...

After following your directions I get a "Connection refused" error. I've tried turning off the firewall (Gnome-lokkit) as well. DO I have to reboot after turning it off?

see below:

# echo "test" | smbclient -M xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
added interface ip=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx bcast=xxx.xxx.xxx.255 nmask=255.255.255.0
added interface ip=192.168.130.1 bcast=192.168.130.255 nmask=255.255.255.0
added interface ip=192.168.157.1 bcast=192.168.157.255 nmask=255.255.255.0
error connecting to xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:139 (Connection refused)
Error connecting to xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (Connection refused)
Connection to xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx failed

Firewalls are generally for blocking _inbound_ access to services on your server, not blocking _outbound_ things. At least the standard ipchains/iptables ones on Linux that is. Read my sample again, don't use an IP address, use the Windows NETBIOS name of the PC...

Thanks wdingus. I'll try that tomorrow!