hello everyone.. my network with samba and winxp seemed to be going ok until i tried to access shares from xp..the error message spits at me

\\localhost is not accessible contact admin for permissions bla blah
then
You were not connected because a duplcate name on the system already exists go to system to change name blah blah

ok my question is what files should i look at to fix this duplicate name stuff??? everything else seems to be working ok

It seems it's machine names questions. Look for all machines for duplicate names. But what does it mean //localhost not accesible? I don't know.

Redhat 7.2 has a nice gui network configuration program located in /usr/bin/neat

Run this program, then click on the "hosts" tab and change the name to something that is more unique than "localhost" You can also set the host name under the DNS tab. I think that one overrides the other but I'm no sure which one at the moment.

here is some more info on network scripts:
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/l...rkscripts.html

here is the tutorial for neat:
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/l...rk-config.html

My next post tells how to back up your network scripts before you make changes and how to restart your services after you make changes.

Well, I think even Windows isn't so *** to let name a machine "localhost". But maybe...

after you change your network settings, you may need to restart the affected services (as root):

/sbin/service network restart
/sbin/service smb restart

Also note that all the nework configuration files are located in /etc/sysconfig You may want to back this up before you mess with it (as root):

cd /etc/sysconfig
tar cvfj ~/syconfig.tar.bz2 .

Then later, you can always restore the backups if your networking stops working

cd /etc/sysconfig
rm -rf *
tar xvfj ~/sysconfig.tar.bz2

Its also a good idea to keep a backup of your entire etc directory. I love having backups!

P.S.
Here's the samba HOWTO
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/SMB-HOWTO.html

Definitely not a good idea to name your machine "localhost".

BTW, you can also use SWAT to configure samba.