I have set up a Samba share on a Red Hat 9 computer. It is a Pentium 200 MHz CPU, with 128 MB RAM, 100GB HD, 100Mb NIC. All I want it to do is sit in the corner and freely share any files copied to it over the LAN. It is installed behind a hardware firewall router. All local users of this share are trusted. If one deletes another's files, that's too bad, that's exactly how I want it.

After a Google search, I figured out how to install NetBIOS on all the Windows XP boxes. (This wasn't a problem with 98SE--thanx, Microsoft, for all the time saving improvements!) I mapped the network share to a drive letter on each. All of them can now see the share, and freely copy files in and out. I can also see the share from Nautilus by entering smb: and drilling down. So far, so good.

The problem is, once I open the share, none of the files are visible. Neither can I copy files onto the share from any other Linux machine.

These boxes also use Red Hat 9 and for the most part I accepted the defaults during installation. I have installed the latest RPMs in the up2date list. On the server itself, I used chmod to set all of the permissions wide open but the Linux machines still can't see any files or folders over the network, so that's not it. It doesn't seem like a iptables problem since I can see the shared drive on the LAN, just none of the files.

I'm stumped.

Has anybody written a clear, understandable, follow-the-bouncing-ball HOWTO on this? This seems like something lots of folks might want to do, and it doesn't seem like it ought to be this complicated. I'm entirely competent at following instructions, especially if they explain in explicit detail *why* each step of the way.

Thanks in advance for any advice or pointers you can provide.

When sharing from a LInux box to another Linux box, setup NFS. Don't use Samba for them to see each other, that's really only suitable for Windows to Linux and vice versa. Linux to Linux = NFS.

Cheers.

You're kidding, right? Linux can't use Samba to talk to another Linux at all? You're saying I have to set up both Samba and NFS to have a complete networking solution?

Is this the way EVERYBODY does networking?

nah nfs is pointless if you have win machines on your network. stick with samba.

your setup seems like mine. sucky thing i don't like about all this is i can't easily double click on the share folder within linux like i do in windows.. i have to mount in a shell first.

so i put this in my fstab on my client linux machine

//SERVER.IP.ADDY.HERE/pub /mnt/fileserver smbfs users,umask=000,uid=4000,gid=4000,username=smbguest 0 0

if you do something like this be sure to add a 4000 group and a user 'smbguest' with that gid and with no password first to unix then to samba.

i'm assuming you set your host linux box's smb.conf already, and it's on your windows workgroup and your win clients are looking to that IP addy as a wins server... here's my smb.conf for my fileserver

[global]
workgroup = LCM
server string = slack 10 samba 3.0.4
security = user
guest account = smbguest
encrypt passwords = yes
password level = 20
domain master = yes
local master = yes
prefered master = yes
os level = 65

[pub]
path = /opt/pub
guest ok = yes
read only = no
comment = liberty files
guest only = yes

[EOF]

i can't think of anything else.. oyea the adding users to the host machine... as root first add a group called smbguest, give it a gid of 4000.. then add a user.. called smbguest also.. with no password... make him belong to that group by default.. then add the user in samba by typing smbpasswd -a smbguest...

then all the win clients can log in with smbguest and so can your linux clients.