I have been reading replies to this problem but so far none of it makes things clear for a ONE DAY OLD NEWBIE WHO MOVED OUT FROM WINDOWS! I have a computer internet shop that i need to convert to linux (one way to introduce to people that there are other OS/office than microsoft) unfortunately after installing half of them with debian i found out that i cant share folders ...(i can get files from MS using a linux pc since i know how to share folders in winXP) and so its no good to put them in LAN....
previous threads have ended without clear solution on how to solve it

replies says:

edit smd.conf (cant edit it since permission not allowed)
i am now in xwindows(gnome) and so i cant logged in as root... i wen to xterm and logged as root but still editing the file is not allowed....

go to localhost: 901 and use swat (but connection refused)
others will say you need to edit another .conf ..... but still permission denied.....

any gurus here who can provide step by step proc to a child?? .... I am part of a vbnet forum and we tried to spoonfeed those who needs help... so that we can speed up the process of documenting proper howto's...

lets start it like that so we can move a lot of people to learn fast and love fast linux insted of windows... i read one thread that ended up bad, the kid was reinstalling back his xp instead of learning linux...

help is needed... give answers not questions....!!!

Not to bash Debian, but perhaps you would be better off with a slighter more newbie-friendly distribution. If you use something like SuSE 9.3, which can be installed for free via ftp or Mandriva, you'll have a GUI that allows right-clicking and sharing folders on a network like Windows. You'll need both NSF (for Linux) and Samba (for Windows) sharing enabled. While I've setup Samba from scratch to share, I've gotten lazy over the years with SuSE because setting up sharing in YaST is so easy. A few clicks and you're done.

Just a thought.

I know you said only answers, not questions, but your posting was not very clear on the overall goal. Do you want to share folders between the Debian boxes? Do you want to share folders between the Debian boxes and Microsoft? Or both? If it is both you would probably be best off setting up samba. If it is just between the Debian boxes my opinion is to use NFS. From a security standpoint and setup I feel it is easier to understand. In either case you will need to make some decisions on setup and security. There are two HOWTOs written on this subject that should be able to help you out.

SMB-HOWTO and NFS-HOWTO. Samba is normally installed with documentation so you can probably find lots of docs in /usr/share/doc/samba-2.2.12. You may have a different version than 2.2.12 so just go to the doc directory and look it over.

The file you will need to edit for samba is normally located at /etc/samba/smb.conf. The file to edit for NFS is /etc/exports. You must be logged in as root to edit these files. I do not understand why you are having trouble editing this file as root. The root user overrides all permission settings. If you want help with this we will need to know which editor you tried and the exact messages you are getting.

On the connection problem when using swat you will need to check two things. First make sure the swat service on port 901 is not commented out in the /etc/services file. Second you have to set up an entry in inetd or xinetd. These are the internet daemon or extended internet daemon respectively. What they do is start up the swat service when it is requested via a browser. The entry in /etc/inetd.conf should look something like this... The /usr/local/samba/sbin/swat will most likely be different. Type which swat at the command line to find out the correct path for swat and enter that instead of /usr/local... If you have xinetd then there will be a file in the directory /etc/xinetd.d named swat with similar settings.

Once everything is set up for NFS or SMB you will need to start the daemons. I have not used a Debian distribution so I don't know exactly what to tell you. There will most likely be a GUI and/or command line way to get them started.

Bill