Untold secrets of setting up SAMBA
1. This assumes you have performed steps 1.1 through 1.9 of Chapter 1 of “SAMBA Project Documentation,” available at
www.samba.org and you are at step 1.10 “What if Things Don’t Work.” This further assumes that you have a “Clean” install and no unnecessary baggage, weird configurations, have not screwed everything else up trying to get it to work, etc., etc.
2. In root run “hostname” make sure that your hostname is correct the command (hostname linuxbox) in root as root will do it. hostname -? Gives help. And allows you to fix it.
3. In /etc/sysconfig/network MAKE SURE the same hostname is in there. (MUST BE THERE!)
E.g., NETWORKING=yes
HOSTNAME=linuxbox
4. Either put or make sure “ipaddress hostname.WORKGROUP” is in /etc/hosts (Must be there or windows does not think the PC is part of workgroup) See below.
E.g. “192.168.0.2 linuxbox.WORKGROUP” I also put all the other "hosts" on the LAN in there.
5. Setup user accounts for your windows clients on the Linux box:
(1) Go to a shell prompt and type: cat /etc/passwd | mksmbpasswd.sh > /etc/samba/smbpasswd
(2) After that, if you haven't already done so, type: smbpasswd (username)
(3) It will prompt you for the password for your samba clients. You must do it for each user separately or create a shell script to do it automatically.
6. Either reboot or re-cycle SMB in Server Setting, Services (GNOME).
7. Make sure SMB and SNMPD are running (Server Setting, Services will show the status – X in box)
8. If it still isn’t working, then make sure the security is not clamped down so that nothing can get through. IF behind a secure firewall, turn them all on. Shut off the obvious ones you don’t need. I am not responsible for any hacking to your computer. I am behind a gateway/router box and have been safe so far.
LEGEND:
linuxbox - the name of the computer with Linux/SAMBA you are trying to get to work
WORKGROUP – the name in the MS-Win computer Workgroup field of the “Computer Name” Screen.
Keep in mind that MS-Win capitalizes the WORKGROUP no matter what you do and it appears to me that it capitalizes the first letter of your user name in WIN-XP. (at least after I took this into consideration, things worked.) You need to keep this in mind when using smbpasswd (username), which asks for unixid:ntid.
Example: smbpasswd fish:Fish
If someone knows how to get true DHCP, that is so I don’t have to lock the numbers into hosts, let me know. Can I put in the eth0 mac address instead of the ip address? For some reason if I don’t have ipaddress linuxbox.WORKGROUP it won’t work