Hey guys. I am having some issues sharing a folder I created on a portable drive for mass storage. To give you an idea of what I have done:
I installed the latest samba on my system, edited the smb.conf file, and now have my windows vista machine communicating with my Ubuntu machine. I have a wireless network setup aleady in my home, and I bought a router and switch to use to hardwire my two laptops. I tried connecting the wireless router to the second router, and then connecting the switch to one of the lan ports on the router, therefore giving everything I plugged into the switch internet access, and the second router handling dhcp for my two laptops and any other machine I decide to hook up to the workgoup later on. I could not get everything working with the router in the equation, so I now have the switch (via the uplink port) plugged into one of the lan ports on the wireless router, and both laptops plugged into the switch.

I created a user in terminal using the sudo smbpasswd -a username command, and also created a user through user and group management with the same UN and PW. Here is the problem. The share folder I created in my documents folder on the linux machines HDD I can access from the Windows machine fine without being asked for a Username and Password. When I try and access the portable drive share folder from the Windows machine, I get prompted for a username and password. I type in the UN and PW for the user I created through terminal and user and group management, but it doesn not accept it. Can anyone help me with this so that I can access the shared folder on the portable drive, and could anyone offer me any advice on getting my second router hooked up into this equation so that I can have my laptops communicating through the switch, the router running DHCP for the workgroup between them, allowing them to connect to the internet, and leaving the wireless available for my grandparents computer. Here's a list of the hardware I have to help you diagram out:
1 wireless router
1 dsl modem
1 wired router
1 linksys switch
1 notebook running Windows Vista Ultimate
1 notebook running Ubuntu Hardy Heron

I would like the second router to to be in the equation to manage IP addressing for the workgroup between the two notebooks and other machines (to be added later), and it be hardwired into the wireless router so that these machines can access the internet, and wireless still be available for other computer users in my home. I am stumped. I have been working on this for hours and don't know what to do from here. Thanks in advance for your help.

Also, I would like to remove AWN from my machine, but when I try and do it from a terminal session, it always says AWN is not installed. It's running as we speak, I just can't figure out how to get it off. I apologize for all of the questions...I am still pretty new to linux but learning alot! Thanks for all of the help guys.

bump...no answers yet.

Are the (to be added later) other computers going to be on a different subnet? If so, you could configure your Linksys router for route mode and assign the WAN input to an IP address on one subnet (or network) and the switch (LAN side of the router for another). On both subnets, add a route on the hosts pointing to the IP address of the router. The router will have two IP addresses. On each host, you will have a route for the other subnet and a default gateway address for the internet.

You can download the book "Linux Network Administrator's Guide" (NAG Guide) from the www.tldp.org website. It is an earlier edition of the same book you can find in the book store. It explains about IP addresses, gateways, routers, etc.

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I had to look up what AWN was. If it is the avant-window manager, then how you installed it will determine what you do to uninstall it. It looks like it is normally installed from source using "./configure && make && sudo make install". If that is the case, enter the source directory and enter "sudo make uninstall". This should be pointed out in the README file for AWN.

Is this the type of setup you're looking for?

wireless router = ROUTER2
dsl modem = DSL
wired router = ROUTER1
linksys switch = SWITCH1

1. DSL into WAN/internet port on gateway ROUTER1. DHCP enabled on ROUTER1 (eg. 192.168.1.0/24).

2. Port1 of ROUTER1 into WAN of ROUTER2. DHCP enabled on ROUTER2 and configured for a different subnet than ROUTER1 (eg. 192.168.2.0/24). Router itself should receive a 192.168.1.x address through DHCP or you can hardcode one in. Wireless hosts should get assigned 192.168.2.x address.

3. SWITCH1;port1 into ROUTER1;port2. All machines on SWITCH1 should get 192.168.1.x address.

This should allow for separate subnets for wireless and wired hosts (albeit i haven't tried this specific setup before).

If you want everyone to be on the same subnet, disable DHCP on ROUTER2 and also switch the cable from the WAN/internet port to one of the regular ports. If you do in-fact want them all to be on the same subnet, you might consider removing one of the routers as it just adds and additional hop to all traffic behind that device, although it's not a big deal either way.

*Edit: I chose ROUTER1 as the gateway out of personal preference. Personally, I don't like the idea of having a wireless router as a gateway device if at all possible. You can choose whichever you want though; the same principles apply.

As for your samba question.. what is the security setting in your smb.conf? (ie. ADS, share, user, etc.)

Thanks for the replies. I ended up removing ubuntu and I am going to reinstall it here soon on the laptop again. As far as the network, I know it is very impractical to have that second router in the setup, but I bought it with another idea in mind, and don't want to have wasted my money on it since I have changed my mind. I am learning networking in school...and I thought I was pretty up but I feel like a newbie after reading jschiwal's post. Thank you so much for your reply jschiwal, and I hope not to offend, but I have no idea what exactly your telling me to do. I understand some of the lingo but I don't even know how to begin to do what your telling me to do, and I don't think my little home grade routers will allow me to do that. I am thinking that stuff would feasable on a corporate grade router.

My next idea I got from my uncle. He suggested that I just give both routers different DHCP pool ranges...i.e. I could give the wired router 192.168.0.1-50, and I could give the wireless router a range of 192.168.0.51-199. Would this in theory work and seperate the two networks, but the machines still be able to get out to the internet through the wireless router. Basically, if I am transferring files on my workgroup, IP addresses are assigned dynamically by the wired router. If I want to get on the internet, the wireless router will assign IP addresses dynamically to the hosts. That is the only interaction I want the wireless router to have with the workgroup. I can't get rid of the wireless because of the other users in my home who depend on it to get out to the internet : )

Thanks again guys for replying. I really appreciate it!

A linksys home router has two modes. One is to act like a plain router instead of a nat router. I would recommend downloading the nag guide for a background in IP addresses, subnets and configuring routes. I once used the wireless interface on my laptop to give my desktop access to the internet. The 192.168.1.0 network was subnetted (i.e. the netmask was 255.255.255.128. I merely needed to configure the routes on my laptop for the two subnets and enable IP forwarding. This is alot easier than configuring your computer's firewall to masquerade IP addresses (NAT). I still used the NAT on the wireless router.

Linux and Unix are the best platforms to learn about networking. You can install and run any kind of server you want to without having to dish out a ton of cash in licensing fees.