Ok, so I once had a machine with RedHat 9 on it - I installed w/ all the graphical options & Gnome desktop.

I managed to get various things running - one of which was acting as a rudimentary file server for my windows machines.

Now, I'm installing RH9 on my only P133 - in command line mode only... its installed, I've setup Samba and can view my w2k sever on my lan (& read files).

However, my Windows machines can't see my RH9 P133 machine... they can ping it, but can't see it in network neighborhood or access it via its IP (static on my lan).

My router shows the box connectd, but as "unknown name" even though I've set its hostname to "P133" (in 3 different locations - I think).

I've disabled iptables for checking things out and still no luck getting the windows machine to even see the Linux box... again, they can ping it, but that is all.

I'm at a loss for ideas now.. what should I be looking at? Again, I'm in command line only, so no gui configuration tools please -- I already had that type of setup working flawlessly!

Are you positive samba is running on the P133 PC?
Also look at the log files for errors.

I dont really remeber where but in your network configurations there is somewhere something where you can define the kind of network, you can either choose between windows network or linux network.
Choosing a linux network could be handy.

Another reason why your linux machine may not be visible is because unlike linux windows is only compatible with fat or ntfs file systems.

any doubts contact me through: linuxphilippe@yahoo.com

or

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linux_dot3

Uhhh, wrong. Over a network filesystems don't matter in the slightest, the network protocol used is what counts. You'll have to edit /etc/samba/smb.conf to setup a share for the Windows machine to connect to, the file is fairly heavily commented so you shouldn't have too much trouble working it out

I've found that setting a "netbios name" for the Samba server helps Windows so see it in Network neighbourhood.

So, in the global section try...

netbios name = name_I_want_to_use
workgroup = windoze_workgroup_name


Also make sure to use encrypted passwords in smb.conf with Win2k and WindowXP clients:

password encryption = yes

And create smbpasswords for all users who will use shares or make shares public browseable:

smbpasswd -a user_name adds user_name and prompts for a password

Alternatively,

guest ok = yes

in the share will allow public access to the share making the password unnecessary.

Thanks to all for the assistance....

I figured I would have been able to at least see the machine w/o setting up smb users, but I guess not

Anyway, after adding a username and password I can now connect to a shared directory on my P133 linux machine (from a w2k machine).

However, in network neighborhood (in w2k systems) my linux machine is in the 'unknown' workgroup and only accessible via its static IP.

I'm missing out on its workgroup and hostname somewhere - even though I've put it into the smb.conf file - also 'hostname' shows its named as p133

Any ideas for this part of the problem?

Thanks!

Post /etc/samba/smb.conf

If it's too large, post only sections you have uncommented (sections with no preceding #).