Samba & XP Home?
 

I spent some time last night monkeying around with Samba. All I want is to set up my Etch box as a file server for my LAN with 5 or 6 boxes running XP Home.

I just read that you have to have XP Pro on the client boxes. Is this true? Is there a work around?

Thanks,
JP.

hi,
no,samba works with other versions well too.
regards,
nirmal Tom.

You need XP pro to join a domain and to use single sign on.

You can still use the "security=user" or "security=share" modes. You can't use the "security=domain" mode.

Check if you have a samba-doc package available. It supplies the "Samba 3 Howto & Reference Guide" and "Samba 3 By Example" books. If you can't find the package, you can download them from the samba.org website. The Reference guide explains about XP home, and what works and what doesn't.

Thanks guys, this is good news.

I have those documents, they look to be exactly what I need. Well, I have some more reading to do!

Thanks again,
JP.

Well, I'm missing something.

Everything seems to be connected. I can ping both ways. I get no errors when I run smbclient -L and I get a list of all the connected machines and workgroups.

But when I go to the XP machine and try to "map a network drive" on my Samba machine XP tells me that I cannot "create a folder here".

What could I be doing or have set wrong?

JP.

Now I have it to the point where I can connect to my Linux machine and see the "homes" directory. When I click on homes a dialog box comes up that says:

Connect to Debian (my Samba machine's name)
User Name: Debian Guest (this is grayed out, I cannot change it)
Password:

No matter what password I put in it won't work. I've tried every password that I can think of. There must be something that I can set to remove the password requirement.

Anybody know?

Thanks,
JP.

This is the smb.conf I have set up.

# Samba config file created using SWAT
# from 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1)
# Date: 2007/02/26 17:56:52

[global]
workgroup = JPGS
security = SHARE

[homes]
comment = Home Directories
path = /jpfiles
valid users = jogl
read only = No
guest ok = Yes

I tried valid users set to %S with the same results.

JP.

You need to add the XP users as Linux users. Those users need to be members of the group that has access to the directory you are sharing. Look at the smbpasswd command documentation, and reread the first two chapters of the "Samba 3 by Example" book. You seem to have skipped the parts of the examples dealing with creating Users on the Linux machine, and on the permissions of the share.

The first example uses Force User and Force Group instead. Here is a link on creating an anonymous read/write share if that is what you want:
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/e...a-servers.html

I created a user jogl password jogl on the XP home box.

I created same user and pass on debian box.

I used SWAT to create smb user, same name and pass, I also did it from the command line using smbpasswd just to be sure.

All are members of workgroup JPGS.

From the XP box when I try to move a file into or create a folder in the homes directory on the debian box I get "Access is denied"

I know that I'm missing something simple, any ideas?

Thanks for your patience,
JP.

Its a permissions thing, I can even see the files in the homes directory. The homes directory is called /jpfiles, owned by everybody file group users. Right now Owner and Group have read write execute permissions and others only have read execute. If I give Others write permission will I be OK? What command do I use to do that?

I know that that method would be crude, what would be the best way?

Thanks,
JP.

I found it, chmod did the trick. I think that I'm over the hill now, I'll get the usernames, passwords, groups, users, etc., all straightened out.

And then I will work on security and setting up mirrored drives and auto backup for my new file server.

Thanks again for your help, see you in a new thread soon!

JP.