Hi,

I'm just really starting out with linux networking and unfortunatly I'm having quite a few problems. What I'm trying to do is to connect two PCs together. One is running mandrake linux 10, the other system is a windows box with Win2K on it.

What do I need to do to get mandrake to "see" the windows box?

At startup I see a message saying "wlan0 is being started" but I can't find any mention of it elsewhere. It dosen't appear to show up under /dev. (the network card is a USB radio network card).

I've tried using mandrake's setup program to try to set up the IP addresses as best I can but the two systems still cannot see each other. I'm not sure even under linux how to "open" or "start" a network; I don't see any icons for the network. Is there some sort of command I need?

Can anyone figure out what I might be missing or point me towards a linux networking site for beginners?



Thanks

SP

You need a program called Samba to enable these two os's to talk to each other.

mandrake comes boundeled with samba, go through your list. it should be under servers or something int he add remove software thingy. make sure you get swat. after installing make sure evyerthing is started through the services list, then go to http://localhost:901/ that will take you to swat. enter your root pass and then go from there and configure everything.

if you need anymore help go to sambas web site. there is lots of docs on there to help you get evcyerhting set up.

I tried installing the samba and swat programs from the mandrake CDs which seemed to go ok. But I'm still not sure what to do; is there anything simpler - samba and even swat look extrememly complicated to set up . For example where do I set up my computer's IP address. Is it in the mandrake setup program and swat or just swat, if it's in swat is it in the "interfaces" section? (I put in wlan0 198.162.0.10 for my computer's IP address).

Also in 'swat' I found if I cliked "status" then I could see that smbd,nmbd and winbindd aren't running. I tried clicking on the start options for these buttons (there's also a "start all" option) but none of these worked. A check in the services section of the mandrake setup program (Mandrake control center/System/Services) and I see that both swat and smb (which according to mandrake includes smbd, etc) are running - yet swat tells me they aren't.

I still can't work out how to "open" or "start" the network either, either to see the files on the remote machine or just start the network going on the computer running mandrake.

I'm really confused!

Thanks

SP

I now have the two computers working now the next step will be internet sharing, thank you!

SP