I am trying to set up a Linux file server in a Windows 2000 Professional workgroup.
I have installed and configured SAMBA as documented in Chapter 9 pp366 -378 of Beginning Red Hat Linux 9.
From the Linux fileserver I can see the Windows machines and access shares on them using Nautilus.
From the Windows machines I can see the Linux fileserver listed in Windows Explorer 'Computers near me' and I can ping the fileserver from the command line. However, if I click on the Linux file server I get an error message saying: \\fileserver is not accessible. The network path was not found.
Could you sugest why this is and tell me what changes I need to make to the SAMBA configuration to allow access to the Linux file server?
Thanks,
Rupert Baker.

First off, is the firewall running on the Linux machine :) (I don't actually use Redhat, but I believe if you type "lokkit" at the command line you can launch the firewall configuration utility).

Lots of things can cause this problem and Microsoft's error messages are useless (even Bill Gates has said so in public), try looking at your Samba log instead. They're much more informative. XP clients default to encrypted logins, I believe. You can configure Samba to handle encrypted logins, as well (which is probably better than disabling what meagre security measures do exist on each Windows client in turn ;).

Daniel,
Thanks for the information about the firewall. I have turned this off so now I can see the share in Windows Explorer. However, I can only connect using the root account. I have tried creating a usermap to map Windows users to Linux ones, specifying valid users and changing to Share level security, all to no avail. Any suggestions about how I can make the share available to other users?
Thanks,
Rupert.

Cool. We've all been there. remember to configure your firewall and turn it back on again, when you're done :)...

Now, is this a public share? If so, you just put:

public = yes

under the sharename in your smb.conf file. You may need:

guest ok = Yes

too (I haven't run any public shares for a bit).

Have a read of this, too:
http://www.toad-one.org/howto/Samba/...eshooting.html

HTH
Dan