Configuring Swat

[David Rankin]

Sean, See

Using Samba; Robert Eckstein, David Collier-Brown, Peter Kelly; 1st
Edition
November 1999 from O'Riley. A HTML version is part of the Samba 2.07
distribution. The html version of this document is G R E A T to get you
familiar with samba and get you up and running. (I can't stress this
enough, if you are new to samba -- READ THIS HTML DOC, takes about 3
hours to read and digest) I would suggest a configuration by hand the
first time so you know what SWAT is trying to do with your system. I
have used SWAT with varying degrees of success and found that once you
make friends with the smb.conf file (and your Linux box) you can do what
you want to do faster and more reliably without swat. The Cliff's notes
version of what you need to do to connect users to your samba box is:

(1) Make sure the people you are trying to connect have Unix accounts on
your Linux box (i.e. adduser whoever)
(2) If you are using encrypted passwords (suggested, Patches available
for Win95, Win98 & WinME use by default), make sure you create encrypted
samba passwords for your Linux box users (i.e. smbpasswd -a whoever)
(3) Make sure you network and netbios name resolution is working
properly(either static IPs with lmhosts and hosts or dhcpd - again more
reading is required)
(4) Make friends with your smb.conf file (you have to pay to play - so
read the man pages and the Using Samba html doc)
(5) Printing from samba to WinXX can be challenging.  I am using CUPS
without problems.  However, I think I got it configured properly by
accident, so I am not going to be much help here.
(6) Use this list for help, but be specific about your problems and
provide enough information about your setup so that the friendly folks
on this list can spend time providing you with meaningful suggestions
instead of spending time requesting more information from you. (this is
easier said than done)
(7) check you var/log/messages file. It looks like greek at first, but
if you just pay attention to what it is telling you you will begin to be
able to read it like a book realatively quickly (I'm not saying you will
understand everything its telling you, but you will be able to get a
flavor for what is going on with your system and be able to include
relevant portions of the file when asking for help -- it really helps)

That's about my best advice. I had never seen a Linux box until mid
January, now I have my 5 computer LAN working like a champ, Win95, Win98
and WinME machines all using the samba shares, All machines connected to
the net via a cable modem, the Linux box providing dynamic DNS services
for all, Apache web server running (still have a little arguing to do
with my ISP before punching a whole in my firewall) and the system is
really BULLETPROOF once you get it configured (unless of course I do
something dumb to break it).

Good Luck
David Rankin
Nacogdoches, Texas
drankin at cox-internet.com

Sean Cornelius wrote:

> I'm just learning how yo use Samba, the version I downloaded is Samba
> 2.0.7. Needless to say this is my first time and I'm lost. I'm sure
> Samba is loaded to the system. Oh I using Linux RedHat 7.0. I'm now
> lost on how to get the swat working, if anyone could shed any light on
> this subject it would be greatly appreciated. Sean Cornelius