For my sins I have to run Windows for the software I require. I am running Red hat as a server with logon.bat to map drives. This works fine with Windows 98, but not with windows XP. I think it's a windows problem - can anyone help?

think I don´t understand....can you give more infos?!
logon.bat with RH?....whereis this file?

Our server was set up by a private company,

On the Linux folder on the Linux Samba Server is a folder called netlogon. In here is a batch file called logon.bat.

This file executes automatically when someone logs onto the network and allows for the mapping of certain network drive to different groups.

This works fine with Windows 98 SE, but not on Windows XP.

They (the co. that installed the server) cannot/will not help so here I am :-)

The contents of the batch file can be found below:

net time \\LINUX /set /yes
net use h: \\LINUX\homes
net use M: \\linux\marking
net use T: \\LINUX\teachers
net use X: \\LINUX\assignments

OK so the bat file is a DOS (now Windows) equivalent of a shell script. Basically you're just executing the commands in the bat file.

First question this leads to is: Are these commands still valid for Windows XP. Doing google I found the following pages:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d...s/net_use.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d.../net_time.mspx

They give usage of "net time" and "net use" for Windows XP Professional so the answer to above would be yes. You may want to review the links to make sure there aren't other parameters required for XP that weren't for 98.

Second thing would be to insure you don't already have H:, M:, T: and X: drives mounted on the XP machine. Right click on the My Computer icon then select Map Network Drive. Once you get the box click on the Drive list to see which if any drive letters are already in use. (If in use you'll see the drive letter followed by a \\server\path combination. )

If not in use you can try using this box to manually select the drive and mount it. Also since it gives an option for setting it to logon you wouldn't need the bat file if successful with the manual mount.

If the manual mount isn't successful your issue is likly with the smb.conf on Linux. Unfortunately I've not played a lot with that. I do see there is a remote announce line in it to make it available so if the XP PC isn't in the same Windows Workgroup as the 98 PC you may just need to add something there.

Its also possible your network is blocking it if the XP PC is in a different subnet than the 98 PC.

Are you sure that the windows xp boxen are executing the files?

The fact that Win 98 can successfully map the Samba shares based on your logon.bat file & XP can not hints to me that the problem is not with the way Samba is setup on your Linux server but with the way the XP boxes are accessing the network. The XP network does work slightly differently from Win 98 but basically XP still uses all the same protocols & procedures that Win 95 used all those years ago.

Post your results of the following:
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From one of the XP boxes, can you navigate to the Linux server via Network Neighborhood?

From one of the Win 98 boxes, can you navigate to one of the XP boxes via Network Neighborhood?

From one of the XP boxes, can you navigate to one of the Win 98 boxes via Network Neighborhood?

Are you running the "Home" version or the "Professional" version of XP?

Have you installed any of the XP "Service Packs"? Especially "Service Pack 2"?

From one of the XP boxes, open Windows Explorer (the Windows file browser) & enter one of the Linux paths into the "location bar" (the place at the top of the window just under the icons that displays where in the filesystem you are currently viewing) For example type:
into the location bar. This should allow you to view this Samba share. (if you don't know what a "Samba share" is, go to http://us3.samba.org/ or see the smb.conf man file: man smb.conf)
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XP also has a crappy, built-in firewall system, especially if you have Service Pack 2 installed. This might be blocking connections from the Linux server.

Also, post your /etc/samba/smb.conf file from your Linux server so I can take a look at how it's options have been setup & how the shares are setup. One thing that XP does differently from Win 98 is that it uses encrypted passwords by default where as Win 98 uses plain text passwords, this is something that can be overridden in /etc/samba/smb.conf.

There are many, many reasons that this might be happening... After you try the above, answer the questions & post your results, we might be able to narrow them down.

The problem is sorted out - it seems XP was not set up to log onto the domain, it was set up as a workgroup logon.

Found some usefull information at http://www.ccs.uky.edu/docs/samba.htm that helped set up XP to the Samba domain.

Thank you for all your suggestions :-)