hey i hav RH9.0 and i have configured samba to work and it is runnin but if i goto the menu>network servers then it says cant connect to smb:// it may not be running on the local network but it is running and the windows xp home edition machine cant see the linux machine but i can ping each computer does anyone no wat to do? is there a server i hav to download?

you sure u have started the samba start up scripts?they are in /etc/init.d you have to start both smb and nmb.
also check if you have a firewall running and that the samba script is actually correct(tesparm /where_smb.conf_is/smb.conf) and see if it gives any errors.
another way of knowing for sure if samba is running is to do a port scan of localhost(using nmap) and seeing if smb and nmb are running...also make sure if netbios is running on the XP box.
i dont know if this helped you...if it did...gr8...if not sorrry for wasting your time

i dont think nmb is started because if i goto services then i can see that SMB is started because it says it is but then unneath it it says NMB stopped so how do i start it

in /etc/rc.d/init.d or in /etc/init.d there should be a script called nmb.
u can start that script up by typing:
/etc/init.d/./nmb start
you can see a whole help ment by typing
/etc/init.d/./nmb
hope this helps