[Samba] Windows XP machine cannot be accessed

[Geoff Scott]

> All of the Windows machines have no problems accessing shares on each
> other and
> Mandrake. The Mandrake machine accesses the WinME an Win2K machines
> readily,
> but the WinXP machine is not visible on any utility I have tried. I can
> ping it
> OK. I have disabled firewalls etc in case this was the problem but no
> change.

OK so Samba is working fine? yes? The windows machines can mount the samba
share off of the mandrake box? they get asked for a password and username
which you supply and then you can browse the shares from the windows
machines?

> I manually edited fstab and inserted what seemed an appropriate entry for
> a
> share on the XP machine. In Konqueror for instance an icon appeared for
> the
> share but when clicked up in was empty.

I don't have a linux desktop machine any more but I used to do this in fstab
(note that if the above is correct and samba works then this is an smbfs
problem, and appropriate to that list, not this one) :

#Samba filesystems, not auto mounted and any user.

//ukldnfs05/shared_area /mnt/smb/ukldnfs05/shared_area smbfs
noauto,users,credentials=/home/geoff/Crap/smbcred 0 0
//ukldninstall03/allsoftware$ /mnt/smb/ukldninstall03/allsoftware smbfs
noauto,users,credentials=/home/geoff/Crap/smbcred 0 0

then inside of /home/geoff/Crap/smbcred I had:

username=geoff
password=doggyp00
workgroup=dudenet


> I have almost convinced myself that it must be some kind of authentication
> problem, probably something basic I have overlooked and so simple I cannot
> see
> it. Can anybody give me some ideas please?
> John

these things are best done manually on the command line first to see if all
is working well, from memory:

mount -t smbfs //server/windowsshare /path/to/mntdir -o username=geoff

If the above manual stuff works then it must be another problem.

Tell us what you see.

Regards Geoff