Help - we lost our ADMIN, What are the steps for adding a linux machine to the domain? machines are using RHEL 5. steps taken are update host table(Ip addressing) change computer name add computer name to the domain controller... what am i missing? The computer that had the same name and IP was working in the same place???

Whoa - what exactly are you trying to do? Add a Linux machine to a WinDuhs Primary Domain Controller? If that's what you're trying to do, you need to read about how to set up Linux to authenticate from a WinDuhs PDC. If you're doing that, presumably you're also doing things like automounting SMB shares or similar - which is a slightly different topic. At any rate, google is your friend.

I can take them or leave em but I do not need any for this application I am trying to get the other Linux machines to see my linux machine on the same network so according to you I can forget about the windows domain controller - done.

There are any number of ways to share files on Linux machines; if you want to mount a particular directory, you can either use SMB (so install SAMBA) or you can create NFS exports. NFS has its own problems though, so I would suggest running SAMBA on each computer with directories you want to share/export. The client machines don't need to authenticate from a PDC or anything like that; they just need to supply the appropriate credentials when they request an SMB mount. With KDE for example, I can browse WinDuhs networks and mount any shared directory I see.

What do you mean by getting other Linux machines to "see" yours? Do you want name resolution? (in which case, just update an /etc/hosts file). For most other things, you can use 'ssh' - for example, log onto another computer, run a program like Mathematica, and forward the display to the computer in front of you.