Okay, I'm pretty much a newb to Linux, but I'm trying to learn. Problem is, I'm falling victim to the famous Linux learning curve and I've got four main issues I can't seem to resolve, which are:

1. SAMBA won't let Windows boxes in;
2. I don't seem to have LIsa anywhere;
3. I can't reach any website beyond my network; and
4. The display server keeps crashing and I don't know how to fix it.

Because there are four problems here (and I want to let you know what I've already tried), I apologize in advance for what I'm sure will be a long post. But it should save some time in saying, "No, tried that . . . yeah, tried that, too . . . uh-huh, did that as well . . . ." I also suspect that at least a couple of these problems are inter-related, so it helps to have all the info.

First, background: I'm an attorney with a publishing/broadcasting background. I am in NO WAY a programmer, and do not understand most of the jargon. I used to do a lot of command line stuff in DOS and (way back) in VAX/VMS, but telling me to "run BASH and edit the config file" won't help me much because I won't know which file it is and for the life of me, I can't figure out most of the linux text editors (but I am trying), so I beg of you: please have mercy on me! This is my first linux install! (Okay, technically my second, but the first was on a box that had lots of hardware problems and just wouldn't go.)

Here's my sitch: a friend gave me an old P2 box that she didn't want anymore. It runs great, but she bought a new computer and had set a password in the CMOS that she couldn't remember, so she couldn't get into it anyway. No problem, says I; I've been wanting to play around with linux, so this ought to be box enough for that!

So I reset the CMOS, format the hard drive, and install Slack 10.1, which works relatively easily. Which gets me to my first problem: I can't get it to talk to the computers on my Windows network. I can configure SAMBA so that the Windows PCs see my linux box ("lenny"), and if I share directories from the root account, the Windows boxes can see those directories, but they can't acces them. (Yes, I know: it's bad to share root directories; but this is a box that contains nothing but the OS and it's on a network behind a hardware firewall, and this is just to see if I can make it work, after which I will turn off sharing for all root directories; I'm not terribly worried.) I always get an error that "Lenny is not accessible" and "I may not have permission to use this network resource." (This despite the fact that I enabled sharing on the folder and gave the entire universe read/write permission.) When I try to share using any user other than root, I get an error about PHP and suid (or something like that).

My second issue is related: Lenny can't find any of the other servers. When I try to use the LAN browser, I get an error that LIsa is not running. Oddly, LIsa doesn't appear to be installed; is that not part of the standard Slackware network or KDE package? If it's not, where do I get it . . . or is there a better way to do this?

Third problem: when I've got Lenny on the network, I can use a browser to reach my router using the IP address, but as soon as I try to take a peek at the Real World(tm) beyond--using either IP addresses or domain names--it all falls down. I just get the standard error that it could not find the site.

My fourth problem is really the big one: I can't fix any of this because I can't get into the system at this point. I decided, in my infinite wisdom, and as long as I had a couple of spare drives sitting around (a CD-R/RW and a DVD-ROM) I might as well replace the old CD-ROM drive that came on it. No big deal; I swap drives all the time. But when I reboot, LILO gives me the infamous "L 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 . . . " error. So, I reconfigure LILO and point it back to my boot partition. Works great, except that now as soon as I boot up it goes to runlevel 4 (which is fine; it's what I prefer) and then flashes a few times before giving me the message that the "display server has been shut down 6 times in the last 90 seconds" so it's giving up. I have no idea how to fix this problem; it's obviously some kind of config error (it was working fine before!) but that's all I can deduce. I'm "thisclose" to reformatting the drive and starting over (since I don't have any data on there anyway), but I'm hoping someone can give me a less drastic solution.

Sorry for the long post, but that's all four problems:

1. SAMBA won't let Windows boxes in;
2. I don't seem to have LIsa anywhere;
3. I can't reach any website beyond my network; and
4. The display server keeps crashing and I don't know how to fix it.

Any help on any (or all!) of those problems would be GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks!

Bear in mind I am almost as much a n00b as you...

For security reasons, the system will not allow certain remote programs access to / (root) or /root, as far as I can tell. If you can use a home folder to accomplish your work, then try that.

I use WinSCP3 and PuTTY to access my Slackware machines and can write fine. Remember that you have to have an user account for the user you are trying to access with from Win, or an alias script. YOu can get that information fromt he Samba documentation.

For your third problem, it sounds like you don't have your proxy information set up properly for the browser on the Slack machine.

Hope some of this helps.

1. try something like this:
[forall]
comment = OpenForAll
path = /mnt/hda2
guest only = Yes
guest ok = Yes

read samba log file with:
# cd /var/log/samba
# more "your file" (with the latest modification time)


2. LIsa? I have never used it. you are using KDE?
try just to type "smb://" in konqueror. it should work.


3. usually such problems occur when you forget to enter your nameservers in /etc/resolv.conf. but you say that you are not able to access anything in the real world even by using an IP address.

try ot ping an IP, i.e. google.com:
ping 72.14.207.99

and report is there any response. maybe your router isn't configured to let this machine in the real world.


4. shut off runlevel 4 in /etc/inittab by changing the line:
# Default runlevel. (Do not set to 0 or 6)
id:4:initdefault:

to

# Default runlevel. (Do not set to 0 or 6)
id:3:initdefault:


after that start the X server with "startx" and if it crashes again, read the error (EE) messages.


M.

Thanks guys! I got it solved. What I ended up doing was breaking down and doing a reformat (since Slack 10.2 was out, anyway, and like I said, I didn't have any data to lose) and then doing what you said. Worked fabulously. Now I've got a couple of different issues:

1. I keep getting a message that KDE can't use my sound card because no such such device exists. This is odd, because it was working fine under Slack 10.1 and I haven't changed anything related to the sound card.

2. More of a point of curiosity than anything else: after the install of Slack 10.2, there's no Gnome desktop available. I also don't find the Gnome package in the 10.2 distro. Is Gnome no longer distributed with Slackware?

3. (Okay, I lied: there are three things.) I've been trying to install OpenOffice.org 2.0, and every distribution tells me that it can't install it because I need /bin/sh and it can't find it. What the heck is "sh"?

Thanks! You guys rock!

1. try to run "alsaconf" and follow the instructions

2. there is no gnome in Slackware. I am using Dropline Gnome which I allways liked more. (droplinegnome.org). that is gnome editions for slackware. there is also another one called gware (gware.sf.net)

3. > what is "sh"?
root@x31:/home/mm# ls -al /bin/sh
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4 2004-06-02 14:37 /bin/sh -> bash

as you can see, it's just a symbolic link to /bin/bash or to BASH (shell).

try to run software with that error like this:
# /bin/sh <file you want to run>

M.

Okay...how do I do that? (Again, total noob here. *blush*)


Excellent. I'll eventually check that out, although I must say that I am perfectly happy with KDE so this was more a point of curiosity than anything.


Okay, I didn't follow that at all. (Speak to me like I'm a five year-old . . . and a rather thick one, at that . . . :-) )

What I'm trying to do is install a package using the package manager built into slack. Are you suggesting that instead of doing that, I drop to a command line, navigate to the directory in which the distribution is located, and then type " /bin/sh openoffice.org-freedesktop-menus-2.0.0-3.noarch.rpm"?

Thank you very much for the help!

1. just run as root the command "alsaconf" in the shell

2. ---

3. do not install RPM packages in slackware unless these is no other solution. RPM packages are for redhat/fedora/mandriva... before you install rpm package, you have to convert it in TGZ package (slackware package). you can do that in the shell with command:
# rpm2tgz <rpm package>


you can use package manager in slackware (its name is "pkgtool") or you can install it in the console (shell) by running the command:
# installpkg <tgz package>

or upgrade with:
# upgradepkg <tgz package>

or uninstall/delete with:
# removepkg <package name>

all installed packages are listed in directory: /var/log/packages


M.

The Lisa daemon is optional, I prefer smb4k which is on linuxpackages.net