After many tries, I've decided to make the thread. I just can't seem to get a 2 computer, home network.

I've downloaded samba, samba server, and God know how many other things in attempt to get this going, but it just won't work the way I want it to.

I'm a recently switched user, I used to use Windows and I liked the whole "Network Neighborhood" idea. I like to be able to play mp3 files that are on another computer and directly edit files on it as well.

As a miracle, and by accident, I managed to set up the printer which is on the media/print server in my home network, so they obviously see each other. However, I'm not able to navigate into the shared hard drives on that media server with Konqueror. Instead, Smb4k seems to be scanning all the networks in my neighborhood with some sort of NetBIOS thing. To my surprise, I can access someone else's computer and it's files without autorization, but I can't access my own media server. I'm not even trying to do it wirelessly.

Can anyone please point me in the right direction?

Just for reference:

Media server:
P4 2.8Ghz
Kernel: 2.6.12-oci6.mdk-i586-up-1GB
1GB RAM
320GB SATA HD
160GB SATA HD
IP: 192.168.10.2

Laptop:
Toshiba M65-SP811
Centrino 2.0Ghz
Kernel: 2.6.13-oci2.mdk-i686-up-4GB
2GB RAM
100GB HD
IP: 192.168.10.3

Router and gateway:
Motorola WR850G
IP: 192.168.10.1

Both computers are running PCLinuxOS up to date.

Thanks in advance for any help provided.

well, samba is for linux to windows networking and not for linux to linux networking. I am continually amazed as to why people try this... Samba is for windows interoperability. Unix has had networking tools for decades.....

anyway, i would recommed using NFS or SSHFS to share files between your linux boxes. As far as NFS goes, i would recommend sharing both machines files with each other using "automount".


A link for SSHFS (ssh file system): http://fuse.sourceforge.net/sshfs.html

NFS:

http://nfs.sourceforge.net/nfs-howto/

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/NFS-HOWTO/

if you want to use a windows machine then setting up samba too.

setting up a simple NFS and samba setup should not be too hard...

I have an idea for this file sharing in Konqueror.
Use it if it suits your purpose

Open konqueror
Type

fish://IPaddress_Pc_to_Access

This will ask for password and then give you the file list on the remote PC.

Note:
fish is a VFS protocol used in KDE and uses ssh for this purpose.

oh right cool. so it's a bit like sshfs?

i've never tried that. will give it a try......

And i am hearin about sshfs just now.
Cool :>

Thanks for all the replies. sshfs sounds kinda cool to me too. I'll give all these options a try and see what I can come up with.

And konqueror support Samba vfs also

Try this in konqueror window

smb://Ipaddress

This will give access to the samba shares on the given IP.
Sometimes when mount -t smbfs fails this comes in pretty handy.

This one too

lan://

A lan browser type VFS supported in konqueror
can be used for network browsability

Well, the fish:// thing works great. I'm able to transfer files back and forth, however I can't stream audio through it.

I mean, what I would like to do is to be able to have the media server stream the audio, without having to download the song locally. I used to be able to do this via SMB and Amarok, but not with fish.

Is there any way to do this?

Well, I never knew about or used fish:// before, and I have to say that I love it!
I have always used ssh, scp and vnc for this sort of thing before, but fish is excellent! I have ssh set up with key-based authentication, so it doesn't even ask me for a password.

Daiver, when I fish://my_other_PC I can see all my mp3's and video files, and clicking them plays them locally, so I don't understand why you "can't stream audio through it".

I learn something new every day.

Well, I can't play through FISH, but I can access and manage everything. AmaroK refuses to open the file, and XMMS copies it to a temp directory

What player are you using?

I agree. FISH is the best thing that happened to me since I switched. I've added it to my guide linked in my signature.

What are the drawbacks of using something that seems so efficient like FISH? Why isn't this the standard?

Right now I'm sitting at my Mandrake9.1 PC, playing an mp3 on my Mandriva2005LE PC, using "Kaboodle" as my (very simple) player. My network is Ethernet-100, which is fast enough. However, I'm not sure if it is copying the file(s) to tmp locally before playing them, but I don't really care if it does.
I think it is copying them, then playing them: The network lights flicker, then the file plays whilst there is no network activity.

HTH

Indeed, I think the file is being copied to your /tmp directory. Check especially kdecache-username, that's where XMMS copies them to.

For me, playing a mov file from the other computer puts a copy in /home/username/.kde/share/apps/kfmexec/tmp/ which is then deleted when I close xine. This seems sensible as streaming video (or music) without buffering it somewhere is likely to give poor performance over a slow or congested network.
Does the fact that applications may put a copy somewhere bother you?