hi everybody,

i have been working for some months with linux in an (hostile...:-) windows network....

i have two questions about which i couldnt find out via google:

1.

if i want to connect to another linux-machine i use ssh, ftp etc.....
if i want to connect to another windows-machine i use smb and smbmount...
if i want another windows-machine to access my linux-machine i have a local samba-server running...

but what if i simply want to browse the shared files of another linux-machine like i can do in windows-networks using the windows-explorer?

i usually do that by mounting the network drive in fstab and then browse the files via konqueror, but thats a nuisance if you have many win-machines, each of them having one or more shared network drives.

so is there something like a netbios-clone under linux, so that i can just watch the entire network without knowing the clients-ip etc? without using smb?
i just want a tool to see the entire network with its shared drives.......

2.

i have read many samba-introductions but there is one thing i dont understand:

what if i have a network which consists of e.g. 3 win-machines and 3 linux-machines and i want every machine to be visible to the others with its network drives?
as far as i think i have understood samba it seems to me that every linux-machine has to run samba so that the other tree win-machine can see all the linux-shares? is that true?

and what if i have a network which consists only of linux-machines? does every linux-machine have to run a samba server to share its network drives with the others?

thx for every answer, these questions keep annoying me all the time and i didnt find a good explanation in the net so far.........

The way I avoid the mounting of every share I want is to simply use konqueror for one-time accesses.

In the address bar type

smb://<user>@<ipaddress> <------Obviously replace these with the user and ip

As long as the smb_client package is installed you should be set.

If all the machines are Linux boxes, kill Samba for it is overkill. Enable SSH and use fish. Like so

(again in Konqueror)
fish://<user>@<ipaddress>


If you want windows machines to see the Linux machines you need to run Samba servers on each of the Linux machines. In a Linux only network, you can also use NFS and set mount points.

thanks for the reply!

this questions have been keeping bothering me for some time now......:-)

i have never heard of fish, but propably this can be solved by google.......

but one more questions:

yeah, thats how i usually do it........but isnt there a tool available which is a simple
smb - network browser? i cant believe there is nothing like that, but searching the internet
didnt help me get any names........

Hi

I use Smb4k for samba file/printer connecting in KDE.

For linux <--> linux sharing, NFS is the way to go. Then you can simply browse all network shares in konqueror ( or similar) like it was local folders.

EDIT :: Your axample, 3 win , # linux machines :

Set up the linux boxes to export their shares via NFS + use fstab to mount them at boottime, I find that a hasslefree way of doing it. If you want to access more than the shares, then off course, fish (or command line ssh) is the solution.

EDIT2 :: Seems I didn't read your first post good enough.. leaving my post in case it proves usuful.

If you find a tool to browse both NFS & Samba shares in one window, I would like to know !

you can download PuTTy to use SSH from Windows to Linux (not Network related though, net connection, ithink)


Google "PuTTy, Download" up.

another overkill, tightvnc http://sourceforge.net/projects/vnc-tight/, I only discovered it recently, but this is genius work.

i think what your trying to get at is a network neighbourhood style thing that allows you to see all the windows computers on your network and then browse their shares.

theres a nice little network browser that i've used in gnome that does exactly what you need.

not sure about this in kde though

Pats : Remember the name of that gnome app ??

i think its built into gnome. its in the places menu under network places/browse network

This section exists but is incomplete
http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/..._Neighbourhood
The service lisa is needed.
I cannot tell you more. I meant to test these things but have not yet