LinuxQuestions.org - [SOLVED] How do I network share between Windows and SUSE Linux

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How do I network share between Windows and SUSE Linux

Hi, I am a complete newbie to the world of Linux. I previously worked with UNIX systems in early days, but for last 12+ years exclusively with Windows. I apologies if this specific question has been asked already, there is such a mass of information/posting on the net it is difficult to weed out the good stuff.

I have a SUSE platform set up - SUSE Linux 10 Desktop Edition I believe. I need to be able network share between my Windows platform and SUSE - to share files between Windows and SUSE.

I have so far learned I need Samba on SUSE, and further readings gave me information to run 'rpm -qa | grep samba' on SUSE and this comes back with two packages :

yast2-samba-client-2.13.22-0.2
samba-client-3.0.22-13.16

I am struggling to work out how to access network shares/if this is enabled on SUSE.

My questions are:
1. Does the output of the rpm command imply my SUSE platform has the Samba client installed and configured - hence working?
2. Why the two packages? What is/are the difference(s)?
3. What else do I need to do to be able to access one of my Windows share from the SUSE platform?
4. What do I need to do to be able to access a filesystem/folder on SUSE from my Windows platforms? Does this require Samba server?

Using yast and looking at Network Services I do not see a Samba server entry.

As I say, apologies if all this is explained elsewhere, but there is a lot of information out there and need to weed out the good info from the not quite so good.

Final question, I have looked around for a decent book, or books on SUSE to help me. Can anyone recommend one or two good books, books that can cover the basic stuff all the way through to setting up networking/file share etc.

Many thanks and I appreciate your patience helping out a complete "dummy" on his first venture into the world of Linux.

Bohdan

Quote:

Originally Posted by bfedyk (Post 4622673)

1. Does the output of the rpm command imply my SUSE platform has the Samba client installed and configured - hence working?
2. Why the two packages? What is/are the difference(s)?
3. What else do I need to do to be able to access one of my Windows share from the SUSE platform?
4. What do I need to do to be able to access a filesystem/folder on SUSE from my Windows platforms? Does this require Samba server?

In order
i) No; the implication of RPM finding the packages is that they are installed. That is not the same as configured or working.
ii) The packages are a client package (ie, a package that runs on a linux computer and acts as a a client - see this dwscription from the yast package manager:

Quote:

Samba is a suite of programs that allows SMB/CIFS clients to use the Unix file space, printers, and authentication subsystem.
The package named samba-client contains all programs that are needed to act as a Samba client. The binaries expect the configuration file to be found in /etc/samba/smb.conf

Quote:

For a more detailed description of Samba, check the samba-doc package or the Samba.org Web page at http://www.Samba.org/
Please check http://en.openSUSE.org/Samba for general information on Samba as part of SUSE Linux Enterprise or openSUSE products, links to binary packages of the most current Samba version, and a bug reporting how to.

and yast-samba-client

Quote:

This package contains the YaST2 component for configuration of an SMB workgroup/domain and authentication against an SMB domain.
This package contains...

Neither of these is the server package.

iii) For this you need the client package set up, you need the windows end to act as a server (....no idea...) and a login setup with appropriate passwords and rights to allow just access to what you want to be accessible (and you need to configure that at the Windows end).

iv) Yes, for Suse to act as the Samba server, you need the 'Samba' package configured at the Suse end.

Any package with 'Yast' in its name is for 'Yet Another Setup Tool' (Suse's name for its 'configure everything' utility) and, eg, yast2-samba-client-2.13.22-0.2 will be the Yast package to setup samba client.

For samba more generally, would reading this help?

If that doesn't, maybe have a look at one of these:

http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/...ion/index.html
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/red...ba-config.html

To mount a windows share on a Linux box, look into CIFS. It should be pretty straight forward, essentially you just need to create a file that contains your username and password for the windows machine, and reference it in the mount line in /etc/fstab. This is my /etc/fstab and password file on one of my machines. 192.168.1.118 is the Windows box, "shared" is the name of the Windows shared folder.

Code:

$ tail /etc/fstab -n 1

//192.168.1.118/shared  /home/shared            cifs    auto,gid=users,file_mode=0664,dir_mode=0775,iocharset=iso8859-15,credentials=/etc/sambapasswords      0 0

$ cat /etc/sambapasswords

username = myWindowsUserName

password = myWindowsPassword

To mount a Linux directory on Windows, you'll need to set up Samba. This, unfortunately, is not straight forward. It took me quite a while to get this working on my network (OpenSuse box, mounted on Windows 7). Unfortunately I went through so many steps and tried so many different things before I finally got it to work, that I probably won't be of much use to you. The good news is that once I finally got it set up, it works flawlessly. It's been about 10 months and hasn't gone down once. I used many different setup guides online, no one guide worked completely, I ended up having to combine settings from multiple guides before it finally worked. Just hang in there, it is possible, but it might be a bit frustrating at times. Windows is very picky about what it will and will not mount as a network share...