redhat 8
samba, swat

Hi, i am new to linux, and i am trying to ween myself off of windows. i have 4 pcs and 2 are converted to linux, i need help getting samba to work. after hours of playing with samba and swat, i am able to ping all pcs and use nmblookup to ping my main xp machine. but i cant do the reverse. windows cant ping the linux box [EARTH]

i have a gateway router, with dhcp, using a 192.168.0.1-50 ip range. i think part of my problem is i dont understand the

field: interfaces

i tried nothing at all, then wild cards, i know that i could use static ips, but i would rather keep them dynamic. i use a lot of virtual machines and such, and would rather not have to wory about that in the future.

the other thing is im trying to connect to the share via command line: <//192.168.0.150/gshare> or <//earth/gshare> is that valid. i know the netbios name doesnt work for me, but will the ipaddress work?

As far as being able to PING one of your Linux boxes, samba wont even come into play yet. Check to make sure you have your hostname assigned properly. Look in /etc/hosts and add something like:

192.168.0.1 whatever

whatever being the hostname for your linux computer.

also add an entry for your XP machines...

192.168.0.2 earth

Linux won't broadcast a resolution request like WIndows will so it needs to know the IP.


"Interface" is just your network card.

Once you verify your able to PING use:

mount -t smbfs -o username=USERID,password=YOURPASSWD /mnt/dirname //earth/gshare

... to map a windows share. The IP address will also work the same.

Good Luck!

~ g0dzuki

The file that you need to edit in Windows is the hosts file or the lmhosts file. Not sure where it is located so you might want to use the search or find file program in XP The format is the same as the one given above.

The reason here is that you don't have a WINS server setup (samba can do it). It is sort of a Windows DNS server that collates the NetBIOS names in your network.

Hi guys. and happy Turkey Day!
i can ping both ways, and can map from linux to windows, but still cant map from windows to linux.

so i guess, what do i need to do to get windows to map a folder from linux. i cant see it in network neighboorhood, or map from CMD.

i edited the host file. (for others, its in the <Win_Root>\system32\drivers\etc) had to remove the .SAM ext. the host file has no extension. added the host info for the linux machines. (i didnt add the windows info since it already works.)

i have tried turning off my firewall on linux, im behind a router anyways, but i dont know if it worked. as sugested in other posts, i logged in with gnome and started lockit, turned off firewall. went back in to the util and it looks like it defaulted back to high security. i dont know if my changes where saved, is there anyway to verify they kept?

thanks to all you guys for your help this far. with you guys, i know i can kick this windows habbit