[Samba] Help to a wet-behind-the-ears Linux newbie

[Michael Heironimus]

On Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 10:46:19AM -0600, Andrew Fellingham wrote:
> I am attempting to set up SAMBA to provide file sharing for our Windows 
> clients (something not for the faint of heart, I understand). I was able to 
> configure both Webmin and SWAT, and can access both services from a remote 
> machine, but am unable to see the server (FLASHSRV.WORKGROUP) in the 
> Network Neighborhood or when I list all available hosts in nmblookup 
> (nmblookup -d 2 '*') and nmblookup acts as if the server isn't even 
> available at the IP address specified for it. I have checked the 
> /etc/services file and it lists all ports properly for the nmbd and smbd 
> Daemons (137 through 139) so it doesn't appear to be a port issue. The NIC 
> doesn't appear to be the problem, as I am very able to access the internet 
> via ethernet.

Are smbd and nmbd actually running? Don't trust what swat/webmin might
say, log in and check yourself.

As I recall, Red Hat's installer asks if you want to have your machine
secured with some firewall rules. If you say yes, it blocks the Samba
ports (and others), but doesn't actually tell you what it's blocking.

Also, as a general rule you should ignore Network Neighborhood. Machines
that have been shut off for days will sometimes still show up, and
machines that have been up and running for days sometimes won't. Network
Neighborhood is utterly worthless for any kind of diagnostic, regardless
of whether you use an NT server or a Samba server.

-- 
Michael Heironimus