I'm trying to set up a small LAN at work with three machines running FC2 (one has FC3T1 right now, but I'm going to replace that with FC2 shortly). I'm still something of a noob, so type slow. :P

I'm working out of a copy of Red Hat Linux for Dummies and have configured the Ethernet connections on all three machines & set the IP addys as 192.168.0.1, 192.168.0.2 & 192.168.0.3 respectively. I've got the three machines networked thru a 5 port hub using 10baseT. I've run "ping" and all three machines seem to be there on the network.

OK, now what do I do?

How do I set up and mount shared directories?

Should I be able to run SAMBA at this point? If I run SAMBA, will I be able to mount a shared directory on a networked Win98 machine onto a Linux box?

you can configure samba servers on all 3 machines or you could look into nfs. for samba i reccomend editing the smb.conf by hand, imho, it makes things much cleaner, and easier to troubleshoot. you may, however, wish to look at swat or webmin, for gui configurations of samba. finally, here are some links to the all important docs

http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/

http://nfs.sourceforge.net/

good luck.

<edit> sorry i missed this, if your going to have a mixed network, i.e. windows machines, you'll most definately have to use samba for that. you may, however, still use nfs for the linux to linux setups. again, good luck. </edit>

In your opinion, what would be the better / easier option?

Run NFS on the Linux boxes and install a cheap / free version of NFS networking on my Win98 box

or

Run SAMBA on the LInux boxes and use the existing windows networking on the Win98 box?

I'm a bit confused by what I've read about SAMBA. What's the deal with it running thru Mozilla?
Will I be able to mount a drive from the Win98 machine onto my FC2 desktop and access data files?
I want to run some older DOS program database programs on FC2 using DOSBOX while accessing
the datafiles on the Win98 box.

Thanks for the help! I may keep what hair I have yet!

every situation is a little different, my choice has been samba, simply because i have a mixed network. it's just easier to setup one solution, rather than two. for the uses you have in mind, it sounds like samba will be your best bet, once you get the server up and running successfully, you should be able to use the same smb.conf, w/a modification to the netbios name option on all your linux machines. one setup, one protocol, seems much easier. a search of these forums should produce many "working" smb.conf files, and then its a matter of editing the netbiosname option, saving the changes, and restarting the server. hope something here helps.
good luck.

I didn't mention the Win98 box in my first post because if I had to, I could perhaps work-around that issue.

I'll give it all another shot in the morning. Have a good one!

here are some docs, for samba

http://us4.samba.org/samba/docs/man/...TO-Collection/

http://fluffygerbil.com/unofficial-samba.txt

http://us4.samba.org/samba/docs/using_samba/toc.html

good luck.