Samba and Windows shares

[schbond]

the problem: I can't see the shares on other Windows boxes in my LAN. One of the boxes is Win ME, the other 2 are Win XP, and my Mandrake 9.1 box. I have shares set on all 3 windows boxes, as well as a directory in my /home. I can't see the Windows boxes at all in LinNeighborhood. I followed setup instructions according to SWAT documentation and FAQ at LinNeighborhood website. I am aware that XP boxes MUST have a password, so I made one for all Win boxes. I have set the hostname to be the same for all 4 boxes. I created smb.conf with SWAT, and all settings are fine.

The wierd part is that I had the * SAME * config working when I tried Redhat 9 on this same box (as MDK 9.1), but it refuses to work in MDK. By the way, occasionally I can see the Linux box from any given Windows box (Samba_hostname_2.2.7a), but I can't access it. Any help would be appreciated. thanks.

Mandrake 9.1, KDE 3.1, kernel 2.4.20

[icronk]

Hi there,
in LinNeighborhood try "scan as user" when selecting on of your windows comps, and use a login from one of your windows comps. you should be able to mount a windows share into linux after that.

[schbond]

I have tried scanning as user - in fact, I have tried each Windows user as my samba username, and I still can't get the machines to display in LinNeighborhood.

[motub]

No, you need to scan as a Windows user, not a Samba user. For the ME box, it doesn't matter as much, but the XP boxes need a user who is listed in its list of authorized users. So the XP administrator needs to add either your regular Linux username as a user, or you should scan as an unused (but authenticated) Windows user.

But what I'm wondering is-- did you check your /etc/samba/smb.conf and confirm that the Linux box is in the same workgroup as all the others? Mandrake makes the workgroup MDKGROUP, no matter what you tell it, and you actually have to edit smb.conf to fix it. I've also noticed that LinNeighborhood doesn't seem to affect smb.conf, even if you set the workgroup in the Prefs and save it.

Have all users been added and enabled to smbpasswd?

Why have you set the hostname to be the same for all four boxes? That could be the problem right there-- how are any of the machines supposed to know which one of the four IP addresses you're actually trying to reach when you try to connect?

Hope one or more of these helps, but this is a kind of confusing problem with many levels, especially since you had it working under other distros.

As for how to get the Win boxes to see the MDK box, you can read how I did it here (http://www.desktoplinux.com/cgi-bin/board/UltraBoard.pl?Action=ShowPost&Board=sysadmin&Post=107&Idle=0&Sort=0&Order=Descend&Page=0). My goal was to share my mounted FAT32 partitons back to a Win2K box, so there's more info than you need, but hopefully some of it will point you in the right direction.

[schbond]

did you check your /etc/samba/smb.conf and confirm that the Linux box is in the same workgroup as all the others?

yes, and it is properly set.

Have all users been added and enabled to smbpasswd?

yes. Should I add remote users (on the Linux box) to be the same as the various Windows users on the network? Becuase when I try to enable Windows usernames with smbpasswd, I get: "User [username] does not exist in system password file (usually /etc/passwd). Cannot add account without a valid local system user.
Failed to modify password entry for user [username]"

Why have you set the hostname to be the same for all four boxes? That could be the problem right there--

By "hostname" I meant "workgroup." All 4 boxes have a different hostname. Sorry for the confusion. Thanks.