Re: tlug: Setting up Samba

["Andrew S. Howell" <andy@example.com>]

    Jonathan> 1) Make the computer visible as a node on our office
    Jonathan> LAN;

I you want to be able to browse it from with M$ machines, you need to
set the workgroup or domain to whattever you using in the office.

With redhat, you'll find a config file in /etc/smb.conf. If its not
there, look in /usr/local/samba/lib. At home, I have it set to:

; workgroup = NT-Domain-Name or Workgroup-Name, eg: REDHAT4
   workgroup = HOWELL

Even if you don't set the domain, you should be able to access a samba
share using \\host\share\path-what-your-after

    Jonathan> 2) Make two of it's directories visible: public-upload
    Jonathan> (unrestricted read-write) and public-download
    Jonathan> (unrestricted read, write only by me or root) that are
    Jonathan> on my Windows 95 partition that is being mounted under
    Jonathan> Linux;

These are controlled in the smb.conf. You need an entry like:

; A publicly accessible directory, but read only, except for people in
; the staff group
[public]
   comment = Public Stuff
   path = /home/samba
   public = yes
   writable = yes
   printable = no
   write list = @example.com

This creates a share called "public", which points to /home/samba. If
browsing is working, then PCs can set it in the "Network Neighborhood"
when they click on the host name. As you can see, you can specify if
its writable or not.

The is a similar entry to make a printer on your linux box available
to the Windows world.

    Jonathan> 3) Be able to use the printer which is attached to the
    Jonathan> NT server machine on our LAN.

For this, I think you need to use smbclient. I've  never tried
this. man smbclient should point you in right direction. I just found
that mine does not work, as I was writing this. It complains about:

Unknown socket option TCP_NODELAY

commenting out 

 socket options = TCP_NODELAY

in smb.conf took care of that, but I still have another error. 

SMBsendstrt failed. (ERRSRV - ERRmsgoff (Not receiving messages.))

Something for a rainy day....

    Jonathan> The SMB daemon is started at boot and is running, so I
    Jonathan> know that part is at least working, but Samba is proving
    Jonathan> a bit challenging to figure out.

There are two ways to run samba. Before that though, you should know
that there are two daemons involved. The first in smbd, which does the
actual file and print sharing, and nmbd, which is a WINS ( Windows
Internet Name Service ?) WINS does host name lookups, think of it as a
labotomized (sp?) DNS.

Both of these can be started either at boot time, or via
inetd.conf. The later is a little slower, but then you don't have to
worry if the process dies for some reason.

One last thing, under RH samba has be PAMed, so if you are having
problems, be sure to check /etc/pam.d/samba, or /etc/pam.conf (?), as
well as /var/log/messages, /var/log/samba or /var/log/security. There
is also a /var/spool/samba directory...

    Jonathan> Of course, if a graphical front-end similar in function
    Jonathan> to the network control panel in Windows is available for
    Jonathan> Samba, I'd be most interested in knowing where to
    Jonathan> download it :-)

Me too!

Samba's web page is:

	http://samba.anu.edu.au/samba/

Well, I'll be. I just looked up that bookmark to make sure it was
right, and guess what I found:

	http://samba.anu.edu.au/samba/GUI/index.html

I'll have to check that out...

Andy

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