Hi. I am a newbie and have been attempting to get my linux box (tyk) and xp home machine (tomsbox) to see each other since last year! I have WebMin on the linux box and am able to run samba windows file sharing.

I would really appreciate someone taking a few minutes to read about my situation. I will try and explain things concisely.

The machines are connected via a router which both successfully use to share broadband. My goal is to have file sharing between the 2 machines.

First, I am trying to ping each machine. On the linux box (tyk) :

/sbin/ifconfig
lists
Bcast:192.168.123.25
which I assume is the ip address.

From my Xp home machine (tomsbox / 192.168.123.184) a
ping 192.168.123.25
is successful.

From tyk a
ping 192.168.123.184
gives
PING 192.168.123.184 (192.168.123.184) 56(84) bytes of data
and hangs
[Ctr+C, lists, for example,
2482 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 2481809ms]

On tomsbox my workgroup is mshome. On tyk via WebMin in User and Groups I set up a mshome group. There was a group called tyk which I left. I have one user, Tom and I changed the primary group from tyk to mshome. In the samba manager, windows networking options the workgroup is mshome and the server is tyk Of course I restart the samba servers with every change.

On tomsbox in My Network places under mshome there is tomsbox and tyk. Clicking on tyk brings up a login dialog, connect to tyk. I enter tom & password. It comes back replacing tom with tomsbox/tom and looking for a password.

Thanks a lot for reading.

Cheers, Tom.

Is the personal firewall turned on in the XP box? That would prevent ping replies. When you were in the Samba configuration in Webmin, did you use the Convert Users to Samba Users? After that you also need to go to Samba Users and set the password for your account. You can also change the workgroup for the Samba server so it shows up under the same workgroup when you are in My Network Places on the XP machine. There are two popular tools to use on the Linux box for connecting to the XP box, I use smb4k but LinNeighborhood will give you a comfortable gui also. You can enter your XP credentials in either of those programs and scan your workgroup for shares available on the XP machine (provided the firewall is turned off) and create mounts for those shares.

Also, if you open a terminal window on the Linux box, type su and enter the root password, you can type ifconfig. It will reply with your current IP address on the linux box.

Thanks a lot for that. I logged on as SU, still had to prefix ifconfig with sbin/ but got the inet addr 192.168.123.167. I'm using a wireless connection for the XP box, the xp firewall is off. I have a 98 box (192.168.123.169) connected to the router as well. I can't ping to or from the xp machine from/to either windows machines but I can ping between the 98 box and the linux box!

I hadn't converted the user to a samba user. That must have done the trick. I can now see the Linux box from my XP box. Thank you! I wonder why I can't ping between them?

In LinNeighbourhood my xp box and 98 machine are listed under the workgroup. The xp macine's hard drive is partitioned and I shared the F partition. But scaning the machine picks up nothing. But it does show some shared folders on the 98 machine, which I can mount. I'm not able to open these mounts Nautilius. But I am more concerned with not seeing the shared information on my XP box from Linux.

I have set up Mandarke with the default partitions. I want to have a large area for storing backups on the linux box. What's recommended? Should I set up another partition with DiskDrake (barely know the name!)?

Cheers, Tom.