Red Hat Enterprise 5.0 and Samba (WinXP Pro)

[Linuxhopeful]

Hi all and let me say i am glad to be using linux and having fun figuring it out.

But alas i need help

I am trying to get my windows xp professional machines to use my linux red hat server as a file server.

i am using red hat enterprise 5.0 and i followed several sets of directions and trouble shooted.. or is it trouble shot.... several different things attempting to get it to work right.

my problem can be stated simply:

My window machines can see the Samba Server but can not access the shares
My linux server and see and can access my window machines and modify the shares

I did everything about 10 times but no mater what i try i cant get windows gain access to the shares on the linux machines

the only thing i could not do was figure out one aspect of the "install and start Samba step" It says to make sure system-config-smb AND windows file system are installed however i can not find "windows file system" or at least anything by that name. Sorry for my ignorance but i hope the above means something to someone out there.

thanks in advance. i can also use Suse linux enterprise 10 but would really like to learn red hat. I can easily uninstall and reinstall all of or any part of red hat without a problem since i have no data i need to save stored on the drives yet, would love to get this to work.

[Lazydog]

You can take a look at this Page. It might help.

[MikeTbob]

Make sure your Linux firewall isn't interfering. Make sure the Windows Firewall isn't interfering also. I This is one of the most common causes of Samba headaches.

[waterhead]

Good suggestion, MikeTbob.

A samba How-To, found HERE, says to open these ports.

If you are setting up a firewall, you need to know what TCP and UDP ports to allow and block. Samba uses the following:

Port 135/TCP - used by smbd
Port 137/UDP - used by nmbd
Port 138/UDP - used by nmbd
Port 139/TCP - used by smbd
Port 445/TCP - used by smbd

The last one is important because many older firewall setups may not be aware of it, given that this port was only added to the protocol in recent years.

[Linuxhopeful]

ok well i dropped the firewall on two of my XP pro machines and the Redhat server and all it did was cause the server to no longer be able to see anything on the network however the samba server still appeared on the other two machines with the same message i received all along. tried to attach a screenshot of the error message(it appears the same on both windows machines) but i kept getting upload errors however the message says:
-------------------------
\\Localhost is not accessible. You might not have permissions ot use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions

You were not connected because a duplicate name exists on the network. Go to System in Control Panel to change the computer name and try again.
-----------------------------------------
so with firewall up linux can access the windows machine but windows can not access the linux machine only see it.

with firewall down the linux machine can not even see the network anymore but the windows can still see the linux machine

[Linuxhopeful]

just tried to access the localhost share from the localhost machine and it cant find it either.

Why is that? So it must be something other then the firewall did i do the share folders wrong? gah might start from scratch.

any advice?

[MikeTbob]

Make sure you disable selinux too.
system-config-selinux

[Lazydog]

Samba works without disabling SELinux.

[MikeTbob]

Thanks for that Lazydog. nice to know. I usually rip selinux out as soon as the installer has settled down.