hello all. its been awhile since i ran samba and i am running into a wee problem. i can get the xp machine to see itself (whoo-hoo) but not the linux one (redhat9). i'm on a router too and the ip's are 192.168. whatever. i named the workgroup on xp and gave the machine a name. and named the rh one under network and that part works okay. i figured it out before but i was using win2k and really just can't remember what i did or need to do now. and i'm pretty sure in xp to see other computers on the network you do it under "view network computer" but i'm not real sure about that one either. any help, as always, is appreciated. do i need to but the rh on the same workgroup and if so, how? thats the stuff i can remember. they can ping each other. thanks in advance.

Yes, you can put the windowsXP and RedHat systems in the same workgroup.
Same workgroup name, but different computer names.

In the /etc/samba/smb.conf, add the workgroup name to the workgroup = option.

In WindowsXP, you need to go into Network Neighborhood and into Microsoft Networks. Both systems will be located there.

In windowsXP, you can also map a network drive to your Linux box.

You also might want to take an in depth look at ur smb.conf because you will end up being able to ping the two computers, but with no network maps. The default smb.conf is pretty self explanitory, but here is a pretty good link:
http://www.samba.netfirms.com/smbconf.htm

daemon

hey everything worked once i edited the conf file. so i can now see the samba server. that was my oversight completely. now however i can't actually log into it. in fact i get rejected immediately without getting prompted. on the linux side i used one of my user accts i created during the install and did add it using a samba password. so what could be going on there? is it on the xp side or the linux side i need to look at? thanks as always very much. and thanks for the link

Most of the time this is caused by the Linux firewall. Disable it and see what happens.

ok, this is whats happening. specifically the error from xp is: "servername" is not accesible. you might not have permission to use the network resource. contact.. well me...to find out if you have permission. the network path was not found.
i'm pretty sure that last part is the problem, but i can't remember how to fix it. again, the xp machine does see the samba server and both can ping each other and i am on a router. i do have linux set to use the default firewall and its on high. thats all i can think of that should be pertinent. thanks again

ah see.. that came while i was typing the last one. will do that right now. thanks

and that was the trick! once again you guys have not failed to provide the answers i needed. i thank all of you!