troubles networking Windows machines to RH7.1 Linux

i hear everyone talking about this SAMBA "service" that comes with Linux distros...im having no luck getting this to work, neither one of the boxes on the network sees each other. im only an intermediate level user of Linux...Networking with Windows machines is relatively new to me, so you can imagine how doing it with Linux is 100x harder :frowning:

Check out the SMB HOWTO: http://www.linuxdocs.org/HOWTOs/SMB-HOWTO.html

or the Documentation of www.samba.org

for tons of info.

First, make sure that there's nothing else wrong...check your subnet, domain, etc. info and make sure you can ping the other PC...if you cant ping it, then theres probably someting else wrong besides SAMBA problems.

If you get it working, shoot me an email or post another reply. I'd be interested in knowing what was wrong and how you fixed it. I'm a beginner at Linux/UNIX myself, so I can always use some good configuration info.

Hi there,

I have been working on this myself with FreeBSD 4.4. I am new to Unix networking myself this has certainly been a great learning experience!

Definitely check out the documents on Samba.org.

Here are the things I ran into:

  • Ping yourself $>ping localhost

    If you are unsuccessful, that means that you will need to bind an address to the NIC.

  • ping the other PCs

    By address and by name. If you cannot by name, you will need to add them to HOSTS. BE sure all PCs are in the same IP range and subnet.

  • Make sure that both smdb and nmdb are started. (easy to do if you are using SWAT.

    This was my last challenge to seeing the FreeBSD PC from the Windows clients. If nmdb is not running, you will be able to see the Windows PCs but they will not be able to see the Linux PC.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

Steve