Hi,
I am a Linux user. I use Fedora Core1. I've recently connected to a network. All the other users on the network are windows users.They have shared some of their drives like
software (D
drive on the network. I don't know how i can access their
shared drives.I know i will have to use samba and edit the samba.conf file and encrypt my passwords and set a username.... etc.
I've read many articles but to no avail. Almost all articles deal with sharing my own files over the network. But what i want actually is to access the files of other users who are using windows
I also tried editing the samba.conf file and setting my workgroup and all but with no success.
I start the samba server and try to connect to a windows machine with ip say 10.10.27.202 who has shared his D drive over the network with command like
[root@localhost koodoo]# mount -t smbfs //10.10.27.202/D /mnt/share

and then it asks for a password. I don't know what this password is about and neither does my windows friend because he did not set any password when he enable file sharing on his machine so i just press enter and get the error message
Password:enter
24394: tree connect failed: ERRDOS - ERRnosuchshare (You specified an invalid share name)
SMB connection failed

if i give any password i get the same error message

Please give me an example of how to access my friend's shared drive through my Linux box
He has shared his D drive over the network
Complete name of the drive is Software (D
His I.P is 10.10.27.202 on our local lan

I've posted this question on many forums and i've got very geek answers which i could not understand
please consider that i am a newbie and please give me something that would get me out of this problem
I guess this forum is for helping out Linux newbie's who are stuck up like me

I always use this command to check if I do it right:
I get this output for example:
You have to have the smbclient package to do that though. After that I run smbclient to enter it. It's easier mounting but I haven't done the kernel recompile yet to include the file system. Hope that helps a bit.

I wrote the command an got

[koodoo@localhost koodoo]$ smbclient -L \\\\swati
PasswordI just pressed Enter here)

Sharename Type Comment
--------- ---- -------
E$ Disk Default share
IPC$ IPC Remote IPC
D$ Disk Default share
G$ Disk Default share
F$ Disk Default share
F Disk
ADMIN$ Disk Remote Admin
C$ Disk Default share
SOFTWARE (D) Disk

Server Comment
--------- -------

Workgroup Master
--------- -------

What is the password about

Password is the password for the network or the windows box itself. I don't know which it is actually but if you got that output you don't need the password.

You can access one of those shares simply now with:

Thanks a lot

I tried the command

mount -t smbfs //swati/"SOFTWARE (D)" /mnt/share
Password: (I again pressed enter here)
[root@localhost koodoo]#

It worked just fine and i could access his shared drive

Thanx a great deal. It helped me a lot

One more question
Where does samba come into play here coz my samba server was not running when i issued this command and still i was able to access the shared drive

You mean the samba daemons, smbd and nmbd aren't running?

Ya i guess so coz before the mount command i wrote

[root@localhost koodoo]# /etc/init.d/smb stop
Shutting down SMB services: [ OK ]
Shutting down NMB services: [ OK ]

Maybe it's got something to do with how smbclient works. Could be it automatically runs the daemons or something. I don't know.

actually i just wanted ti check what would happen if my samba server was not running so what i did was


[root@localhost koodoo]# /etc/init.d/smb start
Starting SMB services: [ OK ]
Starting NMB services: [ OK ]
[root@localhost koodoo]# /etc/init.d/smb stop
Shutting down SMB services: [ OK ]
Shutting down NMB services: [ OK ]
[root@localhost koodoo]#


[koodoo@localhost koodoo]$ su
Password: (Entered super user password here)

[koodoo@localhost koodoo]$ mount -t smbfs //swati/"SOFTWARE (D)" /koodoo/home/share

and it worked fine

Thanx anyways

You've been a great help

Try installing Webmin and / or SWAT
they can help you configure Samba using a gui front end

plenty of good docs here

http://us1.samba.org/samba/

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/samba2/book/toc.html

hope this helps
live long and prosper
floppy