[KLUG Members] Two questions.

[Bryan-TheBS-Smith]

Larry Bowdish wrote:
> I have 2 questions.
> I got Samba working, and installed linNeighborhood, which is a network
> neighborhood thing.  I can't connect to a shared folder on a windows
> computer, and can't connect, or don't know how to share, a folder on the
> Linux computer.

Not being familar with linNeighborhood, I assume you have to specify
somewhere a username/password.  And then even that gets interesting.

You see, there is a further issue when connecting to Windows 9x/ME
systems, because they don't even take a username.  You gotta love
Microsoft for totally screwing up networking with multi-user/network
ignorant platforms like Windows 9x/ME, because they want to force you to
buy their server product.  I love how if you _do_ send 9x/ME systems an
username (even if you enter the correctg password), it gets confused, or
if you send a password, when you shouldn't have!

Using the commandline as an example, you must use the smbclient (or
smbmount) commands differently if you are connecting a Windows 9x/ME
system (and then if the share has or does not have a password), or an
NT/2000/XP system:

9x/ME withOUT password:
  smbclient //(server)//(share) -N

9x/ME with password:
  smbclient //(server)//(share) (password)

NT/2000/XP with username/password:
  smbclient //(server)/(share) (password) -U (username)

In the case of the latter two, leaving off the "password" part will have
the command prompt you without echo (i.e. so you cannot see the password
as typed).

IMHO, don't even bother with trying to browse 9x/ME, as the platform
itself is the underlying problem.  Always make your Linux box the
server, and put your files there.  There are a whole slew of issues in
accessing Windows shares, case sensitivity and codepage issues being two
of them (especially to 9x/ME boxen).

E.g., Linux is case sensitive, but Windows is not (and only NT/2000/XP
_always_ preserve case), and Linux uses 4-byte iso charsets whereas
Windows uses 2-byte unicode.  As such Linux <- _always_ works fine, but
Linux -> Windows does NOT.  And Windows "servers" cannot store UNIX
meta-data (permissions, ownership, etc...) whereas Linux can (even ACLs
with the Ext2/3 and XFS filesystems).

Setup your Linux box as a Samba server and you'll thank yourself later. 
If you need UNIX-to-UNIX filesharing, you'll want to setup NFS in
addition (which preserves UNIX meta-data and is the native service for
UNIX-to-UNIX -- let alone it is 100x easier to setup because it is UNIX
native).  Samba and NFS are designed to work in tandem:

       UNIX  ------NFS------ UNIX Clients
      Server -----Samba----- Windows Clients

-- TheBS
   Contributing Author, "Samba Unleashed"

-- 
Bryan "TheBS" Smith    mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org   chat:thebs413
Engineer  AbsoluteValue Systems, Inc.  http://www.linux-wlan.org
President    SmithConcepts, Inc.    http://www.SmithConcepts.com
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