I have two machines connected to a LAN. Machine A is Windows XP only; machine B has a Windows XP NTFS disk and a Linux (FC6) disk. I would like to access the Linux disk on B from A under Windows XP; I just need read access.

I have tried ext2IFS, which does not work because it doesn't support LVM on Linux.

I also tried explore2fs, which claims to support LVM, but it does not see machine B. There is no user documentation for explore2fs that I could find, and nothing in any of the menus that looks relevant. The drop-down list and all panels are empty.

Can anyone suggest how to read a Linux disk over a LAN from Windows? It must be a common situation.

explore2fs and ext2ifs are for accessing local (i.e. on the same PC) windows filesystems. For sharing files and printers on a network between windows and linux there is samba. There is lots of information on the web on configuring samba.

Fedora comes with a configuration GUI:
From the main Fedora menu, choose System Settings, then Server Settings, then Samba. You can also get to this tool by typing the command: system-config-samba

OpenSSH might be the easiest, and it is probably already installed. You will need an SSH client for Windows, but there are a few free ones. WinSCP or FileZilla are two that come to mind.

Samba would be another possible choice. It usually requires a little bit more setup, but will work with Windows directly, instead of needing a special client.

Hi,

You do not mention which OS is run by machine B, although, given your problem, it seems you are using Windows.

If it is an option, I would boot FC6 in machine B and set up samba to share the disks. I'm not a FC user but samba should be there, I guess.

The details on how to share using samba are well documented all over the web, and surely all over linuxquestions too.
I really don't use GUIs, and don't know if FC6 provides any interface tool for samba sharing (such as SWAT). However, if you feel confident, and want a fast start, edit the smb.conf file (in my setup it is in /usr/local/samba/lib, but I guess /etc would be more sensible) and start the smbd and nmbd daemons (if not already started). If you're lucky the smb.conf hasn't been stripped of all the commented examples and you should probably figure out easily what to do.

Good Luck

*** If you go the samba way, you should really read the samba docs and the FC docs (is there any such thing?) before trying anything you don't really understand. It's your disks...

I tried to do this, but neither of the procedures seems to work on my system.

My desktop menu bar at the top has "Applications", "Places" and "System". "System" has submenus "Preferences" and "Administration". Neither of these has anything that looks like System, Settings, or Server.

In a terminal window, typing "system-config-samba" gives "bash: system-config-samba: command not found". Typing "whereis samba" gives "samba: /etc/samba /usr/lib/samba /usr/share/samba". So I think samba is installed (I was using it to be able to print on a Windows printer from Linux).

I have looked over the samba documentation, and while I find a great many details on intricate configurations, I don't find the answer to the simple question of how to be able to read Linux files from a Windows machine. It would also be nice to be able to write Linux files from a Windows machine, or to write Windows files from a Linux machine, but this is not vital.

Please post the contents of your smb.conf file (I'd say it is under /etc/samba)

Are the samba daemons (smbd and nmbd) running when you boot FC6?
**to check it out please run the following commands and post their output:
ps aux | grep smbd | grep -v grep
ps aux | grep nmbd | grep -v grep

Peter

Are you running Gnome or Kde? If gnome it should be System->Administration-> Server Settings->Services, unless someone has edited your menu system.

I have removed all the lines that begin with # or ;, except the first

# This is the main Samba configuration file. You should read the
[global]
cups options = raw
log file = /var/log/samba/%m.log
max log size = 50
dns proxy = no

[homes]
comment = Home Directories
browseable = no
writable = yes

[printers]
comment = All Printers
path = /usr/spool/samba
browseable = no
guest ok = no
writable = no
printable = yes

[root@localhost samba]# ps aux | grep smbd | grep -v grep
[root@localhost samba]# ps aux | grep nmbd | grep -v grep
[root@localhost samba]#

Don't know; there doesn't seem to be any simple way to find out. Right-clicking on the top or bottom menu bar and selecting "About panels" gives "The GNOME Panel 2.16.3"; selecting "Help" gives "This chapter describes how to use the panels at the top and bottom of the GNOME Desktop...". So I would guess GNOME.

System->Administration has as choices Authentication, Date & Time, Display, Keyboard, Language, Logical Volume Management, Login Screen, Network, Printing, Root Password, Security Level and Firewall, Services, Smart Card Manager, Soundcard Detection, System Log, System Monitor, Users and Groups.

No one has (deliberately) edited the menu system. Neither Network nor Services has anything like samba.

System->Administration-> Authentication: Authentication tab-Check enable samba

You are only possibly sharing the printers and the home locations (write only) of the users. You should have an entry like this one:

[disk]
path = /mnt/disk
public = yes
guest ok = yes
browseable = yes
writable = yes
printable = no

the label, "[disk]", and the path to the shared directory, "/mnt/disk", should be changed to point to your "Linux disk". You can add as many of these labels/locations as you want. Check the docs for the usage of all the statements under the label; you can easily open security breaches by improper use of these parameters.

It may be necessary to specify the "workgroup", "server string" and "hosts allow" variables in your smb.conf. If you set "security" to security mode 'share', sharing will become much Win95-like, but potentially less secure.

The above means you are not running the daemons. Start them like this:
/usr/local/samba/sbin/smbd -D
/usr/local/samba/sbin/nmbd -D


You should be able to edit the smb.conf file while the daemons are running.

After this try to see the Linux box from the windows one, and access the shares you created.

Here is one of the best posts around for FC and servers:

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?p=448977

The files smbd and nmbd don't exist on my machine, which I guess means this part of samba was never installed. I will follow the instructions in http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?p=448977 for installing the parts of samba that I don't have.

Then I will be asking for advice on how to configure. In Authentication->Configure SMB->SMB settings I am asked for a workgroup and domain controllers. I know the workgroup name on the Windows XP machine; should I use the same for SMB?

Yes, use the same workgroup name as your windows PC.