hi, i need to connect a linux box to a windows network. want to get user access to network shares, access to the internet (http/https, ftp, and AIM for linux), and maybe be able to configure the server to forward http requests to my computer.

i am a complete newbie to networking. the most important thing is getting access to the internet from the linux box, going through the win2k server. second most important is user access to shares, and third most important is being able to have the win2k forward http requests from it to the linux box.

how would i go about doing any of this? any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

To share between Win and Linux boxen on a network, you'll need to install and configure Samba on the Linux box. Samba is the open source software that (at least for the time being) provides integration with Windows SMB/CIFS file and print services.

As far as Internet connection sharing and port-forwarding through the Win2K box goes, I can't really help as I don't use Win2K, and that's where the bulk of your configuration would have to be done.

ok, i have samba installed already, i put it on during installation. how do i configure it to connect to the windows network?

Well you will need to make a configuration file that runs samba, its called smb.conf mine is in /etc/samba/smb.conf I will post my config file below as it is a simple one to get started on.

after you have edited the smb.conf to your liking you will need to restart samba, the command for me, I am running RH7.2 is:

/etc/rc.d/init.d/smb restart

You will also need to create a user for each one that will be connecting to your samba shares, after you have created the users, I know there is an easier way to do this but this is how I do it, you type smbpasswd -a username, substitute whatever the username is for username of course.

Then if you were to use my config file you would need to make a directory /tmp/downloads and I chmod to 777 just to be simple, but it is not secure, the command for that is:

chmod 777 /tmp/downloads

And that should be all you need to get it up and running, just copy the smb.conf below into a txt editor and save it as smb.conf in the /etc/samba/ directory.

[global]
server string = WINS Server, RH7.2
log level = 2
smb passwd file = /etc/samba/smbpasswb
workgroup = workgroup
log file = /var/log/samba.log.%m
netbios name = LINUX
debug timestamp = yes
max log size = 50
encrypt passwords = yes

[homes]
guest ok = yes
read only = yes
browseable = no
writeable = yes

[tmp]
path = /tmp/downloads
read only = no
guest ok = yes