OK, I've done a search for Samba on the Newbie section and trawled through all the postings, but can't find anything that quite equates to this Samba problem.

First off, I'm running Mandrake 8.1 for Girly (Ex) Wind*ws users. I downloaded an RPM from Mandrake Cooler and can start Samba with

samba start

from the command line.

When I go to the Wind*ws machines on my Notwork Neighbourhood I can see

Localhost

and its description

Rob's Linux Box 2.2.0

So I know *certain* things in my smb.conf file are working. However, I don't understand thie Localhost name, I thought I'd changed the name to "Linux" and confirmed that with netconf which tells me it's Linux.locadomain (For the life of me I can't remember where I originally set that up - my brain is spinning now!)

Now, when I click on "Localhost" in Network neighbourhood, it tells me in a lovely little dialogue box.:

"Localhost is not accesible
The network path was not found"

If it's not found, how is it seen in Network Neighbourhood?

As for getting the Linux box to see the Wind*ws machines, no luck at all.

Is that enough info for anyone to tell me exactly what I'm doing wrong and what an eejit I am? ;-)

Thanks in advance.

Rob.

1) put a real name on your machines
(anythinh else than 'localhost' which is a self-reference)...
the place:
in linux /etc/hostname....
in windows: always changing
2) install SWAT , it is a really smart web interface tool to manage samba sharings, and it is self-documented (I mean, there is an 'help' near eache single option)

3) a 'hosts' file could be useful too :-)
this file is put in /etc/hosts or c:\windows\hosts

it is just filled with your 2 computers ip and names....

>
>As for getting the Linux box to see the >Wind*ws machines, no luck at all.

this is a real pain, you can't use windows name (at least I can't) you have to use the IP address (or to set up the 'hosts' file)

Eeech, I'm majorly depressed about this now. I've spent hours on this tonight and have taken a huge step backwards.

I'm still starting samba with

samba start

and it's telling me it's started SMB and NMB

However, now I can't even see the Linux machine in Network Neighbourhood and when I run smbclient -L localhost

it tells me

unknown host Linux.localdomain

AFAIK I haven't changed anything since I posted last night saying I could see Network Neighbourhood from my Windows machine.

I tried downloading SWAT RPM and installing that, but it just tells my I'm missing a pile of other packages that I can't find.

If anyone could help me before I feel the need to crack open a pack of razor blades and play a Pink Floyd album, I'd most grateful!

Cheers,

Rob

PS I've tried following those step by step guides on Samba and LinuxNewbies and neither could help me. I fact I couldn't understand one of them....