Hi I am having a problem setting up a SAMBA network at home with a linux box using Fedora Core 2 (FC2) and 4 Windows XP PCs. The FC2 box is essentially a backup server to keep a copy of important files for my PhD.

Here is the state of affairs so far....

All the 4 XP machines can see the SAMBA server in "Network Places" , but when we try to view the SAMBA server's contents, we receive the message "SAMBA is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this erver to find out if you have access permissions. The network path was not found" However, when trying to access the XP machines from the FC2 box, we have no problems at all and can access everything.

The FC2 box has the firewall switched off and so does the XP machines (as they have the Service Pack 2 installed) so I am pretty sure there are no firewall issues causing problems.

I have tried adding users to the SAMBA server so people on the network can have priviledges to access the files, but I am still having problems. When using the SAMBA server setup in FC2 to add a user, I can only see names such as "amanda, amd, nobody, nopcuser, root, backup(this is the username for the FC2 box),etc" Having spoken to a few people, when they set up their SAMBA server, the XP people on the network would automatically appear here and a SAMBA account could be set up for them, but not in this case.

I have a feeling there may be something to do with the IP address issued to the FC2 box as it is dynamically assigned using the DHCP. when I type "ifconfig", I receive the following details:

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:40:95:30:80:5C
inet addr:192.168.123.105 Bcast:192.168.123.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet addr:192.168.123.105 Bcast:192.168.123.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:29290 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:20992 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:32689542 (31.1 Mb) TX bytes:1899628 (1.8 Mb)
Interrupt:9 Base address:0xe800

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:2572 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:2572 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:2589060 (2.4 Mb) TX bytes:2589060 (2.4 Mb)

and when I type "hostname -i", I get this:

127.0.0.1

Also, just out of interest, I can telnet into the FC2 box fine from a command prompt in any of the XP machines, but the IP address I need to use is 192.168.123.105; when I try to use 127.0.0.1 it wont work. Yet I can ping either 192.168.123.105 or 127.0.0.1 and get a response from both addresses???

Our network is on 192.168.123.xxx. I presumed that for everything to run smoothly, all machines should be assigned an IP address with these 9 digits common. However the FC2 box has 127.0.01. This is still confusing though as the linux box can access the other XP machines fine even though them 9 digits are different???

Can anybody help? I have been at this for nearly two days now and don't want to give up.!!

Who owns and what are the permissions of the shared folder?
Are passwords/communication being sent encypted? I doubt this is it since you can see each other.
Have you tried adding samba users via the command line?

The shared folder is owned by the user (named "backup") of the FC2 box.

The permissions of the shared folder are read/write access to everyone.

Yes - passwords/communication are being sent encrypted.

I have not tried adding SAMBA users via the command line - could you point me in the direction of how to do this or give me some commands to type - cheers.

Hi,

Wow !
127.0.0.1 is the loopback address that [almost] every computer in the world has, even if it isn't connected to a network.
Loopback means that it points to the machine on witch it is used.

So if you tried to telnet your FC2 box from a XP client using telnet 127.0.0.1, what you really did was to try to connect to the XP machine, from the XP machine !

So, all your machines have 2 IP addresses : one in the 192.128.123.x network and 127.0.0.1

They can all ping each others because of the 192.168.123.x addresses, not through the 127.0.0.1.

Anyway, it's queer that hostname -i returns 127.0.0.1, it should retruns 192.168.123.105

Good luck

Thanks for helping. But seems like uninstalling samba and re-installing samba, seems to have solved the problem! Now I can access my linux box through XP.

When adding users you need to create the unix user first then the Samba user. I may be wrong cuse I use a GUI,

useradd (username)
then
smbuseradd (username)

they both should be the same and PAM should sync the passwords for you.