I have a Windows network set up at home, and I just installed Slack 9.1 on my system. I set up the internet and everything, but i don't know how to connect to my home network (especially the printers).
I know that I am supposed to use Samba, but that doesn't help me - all I see are some cryptic manuals that tell me what i need to do for things i don't know if i HAVE to do, or even understand.
I am a 100% Linux n00b and have been so confused by everything that I'm having doubts about my Linux loyalty... So I need this explained as clearly and simply as possible...

well if you are going to get anywhere with linux you are going to have to do some reading I'm afraid

basically if you have SMB shares (windows networking shares) somewhere that you want to connect to you need the samba client, specifically 'smbclient' and 'smbmount' (strictly speaking you don't need smbmount but it makes life easier) AND you need smbfs support in your kernel or a module. I'm not sure if slack provide this by default, but I'm sure you'll find out soon enough...

owen@loki owen $ smbclient -L odin
Password:

Sharename Type Comment
--------- ---- -------
homes Disk home-directory
cd Disk
Share Disk Everything
Share2 Disk Music and Futurama
Downloading Disk P2P Downloads not filed
Public Disk Public Files
IPC$ IPC IPC Service (Samba 2.2.0a)
ADMIN$ Disk IPC Service (Samba 2.2.0a)
faxprint Printer fax
owen Disk home-directory

Server Comment
--------- -------
ODIN Samba 2.2.0a

Workgroup Master
--------- -------
VALHALLA ODIN


you then use smbmount to connect to these shares...


owen@loki owen $ smbmount //odin/public temp/
Password:
owen@loki owen $ ls -l temp
total 27K
drwxr-xr-x 1 owen users 4.0K Dec 11 08:51 Adam
drwxr-xr-x 1 owen users 4.0K Dec 11 09:30 Owen
drwxr-xr-x 1 owen users 4.0K Dec 13 22:53 Photos
drwxr-xr-x 1 owen users 4.0K Mar 6 2003 Sarah
-rwxr-xr-x 1 owen users 6.1K May 13 2003 addressbook.global
drwxr-xr-x 1 owen users 4.0K May 8 2003 old.homes
owen@loki owen $ smbumount temp

I suppose the easiest way to manage these is to stick a few lines, like this one, in /etc/fstab
//odin/public /data/public smbfs credentials=/root/passkeys/pubpass,fmask=664,dmask=775,uid=root,gid=users,users,_netdev 0 0

(after creating /data/public and the credentials file the format is in a manpage somewhere ) or you could add your smbmounts to ~/.bash_login and smbumount to ~/.bash_logout

man smbmount:
credentials=<filename>
specifies a file that contains a username and/or password. The
format of the file is:

username = <value>
password = <value>


This is preferred over having passwords in plaintext in a shared
file, such as /etc/fstab. Be sure to protect any credentials
file properly.






this post is a guide only dude, I happen to be running a SAMBA server on a linux box, and I connect to from a linux box. I can't help you with windows server stuff, like you user account on the windows server... It will probably just work though

You are probably going to have to do some reading in order to get things working exactly as you want, when you get stuck post here asking specific questions. Linux / UNIX manuals become less cryptic the more you read them, but it does take a little while to get used to them.

Good luck and have fun