Hi,

I have managed to network my Linux and Windows XP machines using Samaba, but in order to access the files on my Linux machine from Windows I had to deactivate the firwalls on both Windows and Linux and currently my computers are not protected from the interent.

No, you have to configure your firewalls to allow samba. Simply shutting down the firewalls for this is like using an H-bomb to kill the mosquito in your bedroom.

It is highly unsafe to connect your pc's to the internet without having firewalls turned on

Ok. Please can you tell me where I can find my firewall file in order to configure it and what would I need to change to allow samba through.

And I also have an Apache server runnning......do I need to configjur the firewall file to let it thrugh as well?

Thanks

It might help if you indicated which disto you are using. There may be a graphical interface to iptables that can make it easier to configure. If you look in /etc/services, you can see which ports are needed.
grep -i netbios
netbios-ns 137/tcp # NETBIOS Name Service
netbios-ns 137/udp # NETBIOS Name Service
netbios-dgm 138/tcp # NETBIOS Datagram Service
netbios-dgm 138/udp # NETBIOS Datagram Service
netbios-ssn 139/tcp # NETBIOS Session Service
netbios-ssn 139/udp # NETBIOS Session Service

Also, if you manually edited your samba configuration file, be sure to run "testparm" on it to check for errors.
On some distro's, using their setup program for samba will also open up the ports that you need.

Hi,

I am using Fedora Core 3 and I am curently at work so I cannot check the /etc/services to see which ports are needed but I will definitely try ti when I get home in a couple of hours.

Thanks for your help. And if you can think of anything else I should be doing please let me know.

If the samba server isn't running services to the internet, you might install the "swat" package. This is a web based program for configuring and monitoring Samba. The front page has links to numerous man pages, how-tos and even some books on your system (such as Samba 3 by Example).

Hi,

I ran testparm and there were no errors found- it loaded everything fine. I looked in the /etc/services and found that there were a lot of ports being used (not sure what most of them were to be honest) and I found the netbios ones that you mentuioned in your reply and it was using ports 137,138 and 139.

I tried to download swat rpm file in a few websites and found that the websites were down. I am going to try and find another site tonight.

Also, I have now put my firewalls on both Windows and Linux back up. Please can you tell me how I can configure my firwall to let samba through>?

The swat package may be available on your installation discs.

Also, the NETBIOS ports use both TCP and UDP.