Question about samba 2

[fenris]

I have a three computer network at home, two win98 boxes and a mandrake linux box. everything seems to work fine I can ping to and from them, as well as telnet and ftp from both win98's into the linux. I have samba running on linux, so I can see the linux box in network neighborhood from both windows machines (I figured out how to change the samba work group). I can even see a particular home directory on the linux box. My question is how do i make a directory on the linux box that is common to a group of users? ie I want to be able to map a network drive from both windows machines ( assuming a different user on each machine) to the linux box.I want the linux box to be sort of a file repository.<br>
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Also I would like to be able to map drives that are on the win boxes to the linux box for read write access by certain groups. I have read the man file on smb.conf but am still confused by certain points.<br>
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Any help would be greatly appreciated.<br>
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-Troy

 

[rycamor]

I think your terminology is reversed. It sounds like you want to map a directory FROM the Linux box to appear as a networked drive on both Win boxes. Near the bottom of the smb.conf file it explains how to do this, but you must remember also to set your Unix user permissions to make that directory readable and writeable for both users (or all users). If you need more help on that, please let us know.

 

[fenris]

From the windows boxes I can see directories on the linux box, that is no problem (except the permissions can get confusing at times, but I'll figure that out eventually!) What I want is to be able to access a directory on the windows box from the linux box, I don't know how this is done, I thought that samba might have something to do with it? <br>
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I guess I was not clear. What I would like to do is, from linux access ,say, a cd-rom drive on one of the windows boxes.<br>
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Sorry about any confusion that my post my have caused.<br>
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-fenris

 

[AndyBo]

If you can see the Linux directories, your half way there.<br>
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You need to start by enabling file and printer sharing on the Win98 boxes. This is done in the Network applet in Control Panel. You may need to reboot to make the change take effect. (Note:- If these boxes connect to the Internet, make sure that NetBEUI is disabled in the dial-up networking modem properties/TCPIP settings dialog. Otherwise, you may be leaving your files open for the world to see.)<br>
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Once you've done that find the directory you want to share in Windows Explorer and right-click it. Select the option "Share..." or "Sharing..." and fill in the required details.<br>
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Go to the other Windows box and verify that you can see the shared drive in Network Neighbourhood.<br>
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Now go to the Linux box. I'm afraid this is where you'll need to do some homework, because I've never actually tried doing this from a Windows box ;^)<br>
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The command you need is "smbmount". This is a (I think) Linux only command that lets you mount Windows Networking shared drives on to your Linux box. There's a man page for it, and, from what I recall, some info in the Samba docs directory. Start by doing a "man" on smbmount and take it from there.<br>
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One thing you might want to do before you jump into using smbmount is to use "smbclient" to verify that you can connect to the Windows box and view it's shared directories. Again, please view the man page for details on how this is done.<br>
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Good luck, and let us know how you get on :^)

 

[fenris]

Thank you very much for you reply AndyBo, I will try it as soon as I get home. The thing that I am learning about linux is that it can do a tremendous amount of stuff, but if you don't know what it is called then there is no way to find a man page for it.<br>
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Thanks<br>
fenris

 

[robherc]

another way to _quickly_ select resources on the Win98 machines as "shared" is to go through Windows Explorer & just right-click on a drive that you want to share; then click on the Share Drive/Directory option.....a little hand with a blue sleeve will appear under the drive or directory's logo & you're done with that one...time for the next one....the printers, on the other hand, can be harder to share; but , from your post, I don't think you're wanting to share printers anywise.<br>
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-Robherc<br>
robherc@netzero.net

 

[AndyBo]

fenris,<br>
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a general Unix man page tip. If you aren't sure what the man page that you need to look at is called, use the "-k" option to man. This does a search of the man page commands and header lines to match what you entered.<br>
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For example, to look for samba related pages try "man -k samba". Another way of doing the same thing is to run "apropos samba" - "apropos" just runs "man -k", so I suppose you choose the easiest one to type for you :^)