I have installed samba and swat 3.0
also I have read the documents on help
to man pages etc, and configured swat
according to the instructions,
after i also restarted the computer and was
unable to log into root but was able to log into
my regular home acct which i found unusual, the logon
screen would just hang, anyway all I want to do is use my
linux box as a file server, and as a newbie am wondering if there
is anything easier than using swat and samba, i heard of phlak or something like that, the only reason I wanted to use it was because it comes with most distros, and some company might be using it and I will need to learn to support it, but who uses what comes with os's anyway? so now I'm HERE to find out the most popular server program that I can access with a winxp client and is easy for newbies to use until they learn more, I am using red hat 9 and need a lil help, I've already config my host and ip address and dns. i know the nic card works because i can access my xp network from linux and the internet I also made sure to create my shares on my linux box, somebody anybody please help.

In my opinion there is nothing better than samba for networking with windows computers, The Samba 3.0 HOWTO and reference guide edited by Terpstra is full of good examples and instruction. All you need to do is create a simple working /etc/samba/smb.conf file and start samba at boot with a command in /etc/rcX.d/S99local: "/etc/init.d/smb start" and you're there. Keep the smb.conf file as simple as you can!

so don't use swat?

Well, swat is part os samba, but I don't find swat worth using. I prefer to do things from command line - that way I'm more in touch with the actual nuts and bolts. If you are setting up a simple file or print server editing the redhat /etc/samba/smb.conf file or creating one from scratch with vi isn't hard. Here's a sample smb.conf file that will set up a common read/write file share:
[global]
workgroup = WORKGROUP
netbios name = my server
server string = samba server
hosts allow = 127. 192.168.0
log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m.log
max log size = 256
security = share
passdb = guest
socket options = TCP_NODELAY SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192
[public]
comment = common file share
path = /usr/local/public
public = yes
guest only = yes
writable = yes
create mode = 0664
directory mode = 0775
#===================end of smb.conf===========

then just:
root# mkdir /usr/local/public
root# chmod 1777 /usr/local/public

and boot the machine. That should do it. Oh, remember to add the line starting samba to the S99local file.

I got it to run!!! SWAT, that is. I went into System settings, Server settings, Services, checked the SWAT box, restarted xinetd (using RH 9), gosh now I can't remember whether I rebooted or not, (senior moment). Then started Konqueror (KDE) entered http://127.0.0.1:901 and there it was. Now how to use it. Ahh, discovery.