I have installed Mandrake 10 - I am a newbie to Linux. My Linux computer is on a home network with 2 Windows computers- the network card is functioning as I can access the Internet through the card. I want to access files on the home network workgroup through Mandrake (KDE desktop) and use the printer that is shared on the network. I have been trying all different programs on Mandrake 10 and KDE that appear to be related to networks including SMB but I have not been able to connect. Would someone please help with a simple how to? Thank you so much!

Robert

yes you can install samba, then i suggest you open a console and type: man samba

There is an applet in the Mandrake Control Center to define windows networking mount points. Sharing a windows printer from linux is very tricky, last time I looked. Also, see if you can install samba-doc in the software manager. I don't remember if mdk10 comes with or not, but should. It is a pdf file about Samba. Also, try man smbmount, which is the command that mounts windows shares. If the other computers are running winxp, you might be in for a really bumpy ride, but if they are running 9x, you should have minimal problems...

Good luck !

So far I can see the Linux computer in my Windows XP network neighborhood - but I see nothing on the Linux side using smb4K.

Also trying to network connect to a printer on the windows computer brings up no printer found - printer is selected as share on windows - the list on the KDE print control shows the windows computer name on the list of shares- clicking on it has no result and no printer is found.

What next????

Please help - this is too frustrating?

I've been working with this a bit at work, where the shares are shared via Win2k (in a domain, not a workgroup, though).

I've more experience with Red Hat and Fedora than Mandrake, but I'm trying this on Mandrake 10 Community Edition at home as I type. Clicking the Mandrake menu ( the star at the lower left corner) -> System -> Configuration -> KDE -> Network -> Local Network Browsing. Fill in username, password, workgroup on the first tab. Now, click on the Lisa daemon tab (Lisa is for network browsing in Konqueror).

Change the 192.168.0.1 to an appropriate setting for your network. My gateway is 192.168.1.1 so I changed all 3 to that. Make sure that "Send Netbios broadcasts using nmblookup" is checking, and save your changes, entering the root password if prompted. You may need to do a "/etc/init.d/lisa restart" -- I'm not certain.

Now, open Konqueror and type lan:/ in the address bar. You should be able to browse *nix and Windows hosts now. Windows shares will be denoted as "smb". Basically this process edited the /etc/lisarc file.

Alternatives:

One is to edit, as root, the /etc/fstab file. Mine at work has lines like this:

//windowsservername/windowssharename /mnt/mountpoint smbfs credentials=/etc/fscred,rw,umask=0222,uid='mylinuxuid',gid='mylinuxgid' 0 0

where the file /etc/fscred contains only 2 lines:
username = mywindowsusername
password = mywindowspassword

Then I just did a "mount -a" as root and the windows shares were mounted.

There is also smbclient, which gives access sort of like ftp when invoked from the command line with the appropriate syntax.

HTH.

RRA -

Make sure your computers are on the same workgroup. By default windows setup MSHOME and mandrake sets up MDKGROUP.

In smb4k which workgroup or groups are listed?


thane

Have a Win98 and Mandrake 9.2 network running OK with SAMBA. But couldn't get the printer to work with CUPS

Check out the SAMBA guide: http://www.samba.netfirms.com/

Remember both the workgoup name needs to be the same and the password.

With the Lisa tab on KDE local network browsing I am now able to see one of the computers on my network using Lan:/ - one that is running WinME. I still do not see the computer running WinXP. What should MSWindows encoding be set to? When I go to Lan:/ I get xxx.0.1, xxx.0.2 and xxx.0.4. The 0.2 is th eWin ME computer. The 0.4 seems to be this Linux computer. The 0.1 asks for a user name and password or errors - there is no password for the WinXP computer/
Also when I tried to add the printer that is networked through the Win ME computer it kept asking me for passwords and rejecting everything that I entered.

WHAT NEXT?

Thats funny, I had the opposite problem. I could never see the mdk group in Win2k but could map drives using the IP address of the linux box easily. \\192.168.0.1\homes\Documents. I could never get it to work looking for a netbios name for the linux box

RRA,

I have Win2k at work and home, but not XP. Should be similar, I think, except that XP Home can't join a domain.

Try "smb:/" in Konqueror--what do you get?

For printing at work to a Win2k shared printer I do:

smb://domain/usernameassword@domain/printserver/printsharename

Probably could put the password elsewhere like I do with mounting...haven't tried to find out. Substitute workgroup for domain and I'd guess that should work.

HTH,

Steve

I am going to try Linneighborhood with hopes that it will resolve some of these problems.