samba?
 

When i use nautilus and try to view the shares on my network the computers show up but the shares under them dont(both windows shares and linux shares). The windows machines are running XP on NTFS. Do i have to create a fat32 partition to put network shares on in order for my linux machine to see them? If the problem is NTFS why cant i see the linux shares either?Thanks

No, the filesystem type of the shared directories don't have anything to do with it... The reads / writes are handled by the host computer.

Can you see anything from a terminal command? Try smbclient -L //server_name . Replace the server_name, of course, or use an IP if you don't have the hosts file set-up.

That command should list any shares on the server_name computer that you can access. If you can see any, then there most be something not correctly configured in Nautilus. I don't use it, so I can't help much there.

smbclient works fine. I can get access to all the shares on the Linux server, but from the server when i use nautilus and type
smb:// it lists all the computers on the network . when i open them it does not give me access to the shares. i.e. When i open the network neighborhood on windows machine it shows me the Linux shares and my windows shares, but when i try to see them through nautilus using smb: it just shows the machines but none of the shares. It doesnt even show me the shares on that particular server even though i can access them from my windows machine? Thanks

There might be an option in Nautilus, somewhere, to set a default user / password to scan the network as. Hopefully, somebody who uses Naut will come along.