Samba (DNS?) problem

[Scot L. Harris]

On Wed, 2004-07-21 at 13:03, Santiago Cepas wrote:
> Hello everybody.
> I'm trying to configure a public folder in my linux box that can be
> accessed by other window machines in my local network. However i'm
> unable to make it work.
> 
> I've been googling and reading and come to the conclusion that i'm
> having a DNS problem. When I do
> 	ping WinMachine
> I get:
> 	ping: unknown host WinMachine
> 
> However when i ping the ip address directly, everything works find.

ping does not use netbios to resolve the names of systems, it will use
dns, nis, or the host file for that.  There is a high probability that
your windows clients are not in the DNS, and if they are probably at
some generic type name assigned by DHCP.

Actually a better test would be:

smbclient -L servername -N

This should show you the systems that your linux box has seen on the
network.  It may take time for it to see a system that was just put on
the network.  

That said, samba uses NETBIOS to exchange information with systems on
the network.  What you need to sort out is the type of permissions your
windows network is using and make sure your samba server is configured
correctly.

If you are not running a full blown domain then user permissions are
probably used.  I have found that in that case you may get better
results if you create a user on the samba server using smbpasswd to
create and set the user up.  

>From a windows box on your network try using the run command (from the
start menu) and put \\ipaddressofsambaserver in the run command.  I have
found that this will work sometimes if the name of the server can not be
resolved.

Also you may need to configure your samba server to never be the
prefered master, local master, or domain master, and set the os level to
20 or less.  And set the netbios name in the samba configuration file
for your server.  And make sure the workgroup name corresponds to your
windows workgroup.

Also if you have a wins server on your network configure the samba
server to point to it.

You may want to load samba-swat.  It gives you a fairly nice graphical
interface (via a web page) to configure all of this.  Once you have that
loaded just go to a browser and point it at http://localhost:901

-- 
Scot L. Harris
webid at cfl.rr.com

You had mail, but the super-user read it, and deleted it!