Here's what I am trying to do:

I have a Linux computer as my main server and connected to the internet...

I have 2 windows98 computers set as clients...

I have dhcp enabled on the linux computer and the 2 windows computers have no static ip addressing at all...just dynamically(is that correct?) addressed upon bootup.

What I want to do is to have the users I have set up to actually log in into my linux server... what do i need to do to make that happen?

do you mean like when windows boots, have them use their network logon to get access to the network?

you need a Primary Domain Controller, which can be done with Samba

i did this at school as part of learning setting up windows 2000 scopes and the like... yes, thats what i am hoping to do...

almost like my 2 client windows computers have to login to the main server to have any access to the network at all... and if no network access then those people logging in have no access to their computers...

do you follow what im saying? i want the client computer users to be able to use their own hard drive space but if they cant login to the network then i dont want them to be able to use those computers at all... can it be done or is it just pointless anyways?

There is a PDC for the later versions of samba.

Is samba something that needs to be installed?

probably so,


if you don't have /usr/sbin/smbd then it looks like you don't have it.

i installed the samba, samba server and wizdrake...

i ran wizdrake and then ran the network configuration tool... it asked me for a default gateway device and i left it empty... was there something i should have put there?

i ran the samba setup and configuration tool and enabled printing and file sharing but i was not able to see the shares from either of my 2 windows98 computers... how i make that happen?

personally i'd seriosuly recommend writing your smb.conf file completely by hand, it's very simple to do really, and nothing nearly as scary looking as the default one....

[global]
security = user
preserve case = yes
null passwords = yes
encrypt passwords = no
workgroup = swingyourpants
server string = simon
socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY
#SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192
log file = /var/log/samba/%m.log
mangle case = yes
default case = lower
hosts allow = 10.0.0.2 10.0.1.2 10.0.0.1 10.0.1.1
directory mask = 0777

[mp3]
path = /mp3
comment = mp3
writeable = yes
public = yes

that's all mine really saysm and you can see most of it almost reads in plain english... you really need to read some of the samba docs on your own to get somethign of a background in it.

is this /samba/smb.conf? because mine looks totally different..

is this file automatically created totally secure?

another thing... once i change (or in my case, PLAY with) the file do i have to start samba again or is it good to go once i save this file to disk?

Oh and one other thing (sorry)... when i try to run samba config from the menu netscape opens a browser window and goes to netscape home page ofr reasons that are beyond me... any idea why this is happening?

well, you should always keep a backup, i have 5 or 6 different versions on my system, and yes you need to restart samba.. 'samba restart' and also use testparm to check if your file is valid.

your file will look totally different as it's got every option in sight listed in it, which makes it look much harder than it is

so then the only options i need are going to be the ones in your sample file above, most likely, right?

The samba config you are talking about is swat


It is probably disabled, I don't have Mandrake, so acid may know where.

I would think /etc/services, or your form of init scripts. (inetd)


what it should do is connect to localhost:901

then swat should ask for a username and password


You don't really need it if you keep the config simple it will work fine.