I'm not new to linux but I am new to opensuse 11. I find the distro easy to use for the most part but I am struggling to get my network connected to a windows computer. I would like it if some one could point me towards a how to or step by step for doing this. I'm using KDE4 opensuse 11. I'd also like to know how to register and what are the benefits of registration. I am coming from ubuntu so I guess I'm just used to more community support. If there is such a network for opensuse I'd like to know about that as well.
Thanks for all your help. Any advice is good advice at this point.

hi,

so if you need help, then you can just connect to the irc channel :

irc://irc.opensuse.org/opensuse

opensuse comes with an irc client, so that should work.

next, i would not recommend using kde4 yet since it is very unstable and it just sucks compared to kde3. opensuse 11 works well, so that shouldn't be an issue. as for getting your network connected to a windows computer, you were a bit unclear what you wanted to do exactly. if you want to share files, then just install the samba packages in yast. you probably will have to either turn off your firewall, or allow the samba client to connect. for me, i just turned it off completely. then you should be able to see your windows machine's shares.

if you have anymore questions, then just post them, or go to the irc channel, its usually a lot faster for small questions.

good luck,
rabbit2345 ^_^

In my experience the version of kde4 that was included with SuSE 10.3 was worthless. It wouldn't run at all. SuSE did a great job improving on KDE4 and for SuSE 11 it is viable option. Consider installing both KDE 3.5 and KDE 4. You may find that KDE 4 doesn't support enough of the features that KDE 3.5 did. I default to using KDE4 on my desktop and KDE3 on my laptop. If KDE 4 starts bugging me, I'll just log into KDE 3.5 the next time.

You want to install and configure Samba if you want to share files with a Windows computer. How you do so will depend on what you need to offer and what version of Windows is on the network.

The default is to use the "Security = User" model. This is the model that NT and XP use. You need to enable file sharing on the windows machine and log in with a password. Use the same username and password for both the windows and Linux computer. Then use "smbpasswd -a <username>" to create windows credentials for each user. This will create a windows uid and add it to a file by the same name (smbpasswd). This is the simplest method, and I may be jumping the gun, but it sounds like you only have one or two windows machines on a small lan. Also, using the "smbpasswd" command is the most common oversight and may not be handled for you with a samba configuration wizard.

The SuSEfirewall2 program ( e.g. "kdesu /sbin/yast2 firewall" ) lets you open the Samba ports easily by selecting the service to allow. Ports 119 and 445 will be the defaults. This is what XP uses. Ports 117-119 where used by Windows 98 but it used network wide broadcasts by default which can clog up traffic.

Also install the samba-doc package. It includes the pdf version of the "Samba 3 by Example" book. This is the same one you would find in Barnes and Nobles. You may find a sample configuration that is perfect. The procedure of configuring a share is gone through step by step, including the ownership and permissions you want.

For example, you may offer a globally writable share. If you do you want the permissions of the directory to be the same that are used for /tmp. The example will include the steps to do this (maybe you already know) and explain why.

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Most likely you will use the "Security = User" model to access your Linux home directory from your Windows machine, and if you want to offer a service (share) for music, video or podcasts, create a service that allows guest access.

Good Luck!

Anyone suffering the same trouble as me should refer to this thread. I found my answer there. The thing that worked was to simply use yast to start samba and use konqueror smb://the ip address of the windows computer

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...e-10.2-622108/