[KLUG Members] Re: Qualified Domain Names, et al -- local disk access v. Windows Networking

[Adam Williams]

>>Wonderful information from Adam Williams and Brian J Smith regarding the
>>Qualified Host Name question(s).  My hats off to you both!! :o)
>I'm glad Adam's a little less terse and more "to the point" than me.

I'm "to the point"?!  Wow,  that may be the first time I've gotten that
complement on this list.  Thanks!

>>Since our family is networked, my wife and daughters computrs are
>>conncted to the switching hub and we can ping and see each other all the
>>time (when computer are on).  However,  like I was saying above, I have
>>the static address of 192.168.0.1 with subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 and
>>a gateway of 192.168.0.5 (our internet "router"  web-beetle/modem), and
>>my wife is all the same except  192.168.0.2, and Sammy is 192.168.0.3
>>all else being the same.   Windows won't recognize the Linux system when
>>I have it loaded as the running OS on my machine, but I can see my
>>"local" partitioned drives.
>Anyhoo, you need to setup Samba.  Samba is the SMB/CIFS service that
>emulates "Windows Networking."  By default, Samba acts like a full
>Win/NT server (security=user) with all that security (well, sort of ;-)
>and access privaledge levels, details, even domain logins, etc...  If
>you want it to act like just another Win/DOS system (security=share),
>you can do that too.  Samba has about a thousand options -- because it

So you don't get scared off, the 'average' home user needs about a dozen
options.

>can emulate _any_ version of Windows Networking, from old LAN Manager, 
>to just short of ActiveDirectory now -- even multiple implementations at
>the same time (depending on share, user, etc...).
>Samba is a beast that is best served up with a book.  As much as
>MacMillian/Sams' "Samba Unleashed" sports 100 pages of my original
>thought, I would actually recommend you go with something like their
>"Samba in 24 Hours" book.  The former is a bit on the "everything" side,
>and the latter is more on the "here's how to get started" side.  Or even
>some of the general Linux books have a chapter or two that covers Samba
>that might suffice.

There are several tools (including swat which is probably already on
your box) that can provide a GUI for setting up Samba,  both
freshmeat.net and the Samba home page (http://www.samba.org) have at
least several more.