I'm a little tired here, so forgive me if I forget to mention something.

I have a RH9 Linux box with samba services running serving 2 folders. Samba is setup for my Workgroup, but I can not access the system from my network neighborhood or anything like that on my Win2k system.

I don't know what user settings I need to put in or anything like that. I tried to just put in the name of my Win2k system in there, but I still get no connection...

I'm sorry if I can't provide you with more information right now because I really don't know what people need to know as far as networking between Linux and Windows. I'm just not good with networking, though I try. Please, help me here, I'm quite desperate to get this to work.

what r the ip addresses of computers?

The first thing to do is do a little troubleshooting

This is what i would do

1. Check IP address are in the same class/subnet
2. Ping samba machine's IP from SMB machine. Is it sucessful?
3. Ping samba machine by name from SMB Machine. Is it sucessful?
4. Ping samba machine by IP from w2k machine. Is it sucessful?
5. Ping samba machine by name from W2k Machine. Is it sucessful?

I've included my smb.conf file - it's just one i've been fiddling with, its really simple. However my setup show up on all OS's, W98, W2k & Winxp. If your's it alot bigger , start of simple, with just the essential stuff. Which is basically listed below.

[global]
workgroup = Workgroup
server string = My Lil Linux Box
security = user
interfaces = 192.168.0.61
encrypt passwords = yes
smbpasswd file = /etc/samba/smbpasswd
netbios name = Linuxbox

[Music]
comment = Music & MP3's
path = /mnt/hdb/smbshare/music
read only = no
browsable = yes
; guest ok = yes

;[test]
; comment = test
; path = /mnt/hdb/smbshare
; read only = no
; browsable = yes


[test]
comment = This is a test
path = /mnt/hdb/smbshare/test

Lastly you will need to create a user account so you can log in. You do this by using the following:

useradd {login Name you want}
smbpasswd -a {login Name You want} but has to be same as above

Then use those when it prompts you.

Good luck
Stewart
P.S I know how you are feeling, i've been trying to get Postfix/Pop3 to recieve mail just about all day/night....i'm getting rather tired myself and not to mention frustrated

Well, I can ping either which way through IP. I don't think I'm able to ping the machine name, which is simply name 'Tom' right now. The computer shows up in my workgroup. I have NetBIOS installed. I'm still unsure what else to be looking for and doing.

EDIT: It shows up in my workgroup, it even carries the same description I put in the samba settings, but it simply says it is not accessible.

I'm suffering the same problem. Everything seems to be groovy but when I try to put some files into the directory it says access is denied, make sure disk is not full or write protected. There is sure enough space on the hard disk. I'll let you know if I figure it out.

AH! HELP!

Now the GUI for my Samba server doesn't want to load up anymore, I think it has to do with the nmbd service not running any more. I have no idea what's going on here, I can't figure out how to get the service to run again, Services keeps saying it's stopped.

check the logs.. "/var/log/messages" and there s directory located in "/var/log/samba" check the files in it.

OK, got samba server gui running again by replacing the smb.conf I tried modifying with a smb.conf with default parameters. I'm scared to try and mess with smb.conf again, as I have dones so many times to no avail....

No I'm not really, but you have to understand how frustrating this has been for me when I don't even have a complicated network set up in my home. I have little to no understanding of networking, especially between Nix and Win. And the problem is that this doesn't look all too complicated, yet it has already taken me days to try and get such a thing to work...

I have a new way of trying to approach this problem. Please, if somebody could share their experiences where they have NOT gotten samba to work, but eventually did, please post them. Please post what you believed to be the problem and how you fixed it. I'm so desperately trying to get this to work and I can't seem to find any real help on how to get this working. Everything I find makes it look like it supposed to be so easy and so automatic, but they have no real troubleshooting tips. Please, once again, help me here. No, I don't have a real deadline with this, but you have to understand how frsutrating this has been for me.

Thanks in advanced.

Howdy,

Samba has always been a little picky on some areas.

W/regards to pinging by name, because your 2k box doesn't resolve anything using it's DNS table you may need to force the box to recogize the name data.

NAME RESOLUTION
Win2k and XP rigs with modified hosts file
<windir>\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
<windir>\system32\drivers\etc\lmhosts.sam

You should include the IP and hostname you are looking to use for the RH box. Now if you're using DHCP for everything this will be moot.

Test if you have correctly edited by pinging based on the hostname you entered.

Windows has a habit of being really crappy with NetBIOS table lookups. To confirm if the Windows box is even able to see the SMB packet data coming from the Linux box use nbtstat
nbtstat -R #this flushes the current table
nbtstat -a <ip of RH box> #this should return a reply w/the SMB name


USERNAME CONSIDERATIONS
When you connect to a resource from the Windows box to the RH server it will attempt to login with your current "windows" login information. You may login using another set of credentials if you use the "map network drive" option. You may wish to create a username to login by using
This sets and creates the smb account:
smbpasswd -a <login name>


FIREWALL CAVEATS
If you are using the Default iptables firewall options for RH9 it may be blocking SMB traffic (Port 139) I've normally manually edited my iptables rules (this is not recommended) but I allow tcp/udp traffic bound for 139.

SMB.CONF
Most importantly make sure that the
hosts allow = <ip range> is properly set.
e.g.
hosts allow = 127.0.0. 192.168.1.

Trailing . is important.

Hope that gives you some areas to further test.

RH9 comes with the firewall on by default. You can try disabling the firewall temporarily to test this, see if those SMB packets are being blocked. If that's the case, you can come up with a firewall setup that works better for you. I think the command is something like redhat-config-security, It's been a while since I've used RH9. Good luck.

if u dont want to configure smb.conf directly, u may use swat.. swat is a web tool to confgure smb.conf.

check if it was installed
rpm -qa | grep swat

install swat if u didnt install it yet,
enable it as service. restart xinetd service
and open a browser and type http://localhost:901
login as root
u can configure samba easyly..


i hope we can help u.

Is there something on my Windows-side that I need in order to access NFS? A friend of mine who's familiar with Samba and Linux told me that I need something to access the NFS.