Browsing Win file system slow to recognize network
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Browsing Win file system slow to recognize network
Have FC2 and when I browse the local network I see the windows network and inside that my workgroup, but when I click on that, it doesn't show me any Win computers, just says unrecognized network and zero items. If I go back in about 5 minutes and try again everything is fine and I can see the computers and access them ok. I always can see them if I wait long enough.
Is there some reason for this delay, or does anyone know how to fix it? Its happened exactly the same on 2 difference linux laptops (same OS version).
I'm afraid that UNIX graphical interfaces for Windows network access almost all suck, so you need to keep your expectations modest. I don't know why the command-line tools work perfectly and the graphical ones are so much worse, but that's the way it seems to be. Network browsing rarely works for me with either GNOME or KDE, but to be fair the technology of Windows network browsing is such a kludge that it's amazing it works at all.
Unless your network has a WINS server (or Samba) and the machines are set to use it then they have to find each other by a kind of periodic broadcasting, which means that it takes time for your system to find out about servers on the network. So trying setting WINS client in smb.conf, but don't expect it to work perfectly in GNOME even then...
That explains, I suppose, why I have to wait 5 minutes every time I want to browse the windows computers! (I think), from Linux, which seems to work fine in a nice GUI (file manager style) that supports drag n drop. Only problems are its slow to find a computer, and I would like to be able to see a linux box from the windows computers.
I would also like to see one linux box from another one, in the same way.
Well thanks for the info, I'll look into some of the things you mention. (e.g. WINS, whatever that is)
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