samba.
I THINK I have stuff right... because my friends can try to log into my shares.
and I can see what shares they have.
I can't access their shares, i'ts like the -D option in smbclient doesn't do anything at all... (or maybe I have MORE documentation to read... *sigh* there is just SO much I don't know where to start)
but I am noticing this: in trying to access my shares with smbclient I get (stuff in my /var/logs/messages: samba(pam_unix)[14905]: authentication failure;)

$ smbclient -L hogwarts
added interface ip=192.168.0.2 bcast=192.168.0.255 nmask=255.255.255.0
Password:
Anonymous login successful
Domain=[CAERDUN] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 2.0.7]
tree connect failed: code 0

I have a firewall/hub, and everyone is behind it...
can someone at least tell me what to read to get this working?
do I have to install more rpms? I think I got every 'smb' and 'samba' off both cds for RH7.1 but any advice would help.
thank you very much

SAMBA is designed to work on a single network (for example, all hosts configured on one ethernet segment). If you are trying to configure SAMBA to work across subnets, this will be very difficult (not to mention the security problems).

Are your SAMBA clients on the same subnet as the SAMBA server?

... all of our ethernet cards are directly connected to my hub/firewall. our modem connects to the hub, I don't think there are any other networks involved. there is only one hub... I guess I don't know what a subnet is.

then again, shouldn't I be able to access my OWN shares??

yes, all computers are on the same subnet.

The problem is that you have configured your system for USER or DOMAIn security rather than SHARE security.

This is a good idea, especially if you have Windows NT machines to contend with.

If security is not an issue, you may use SHARE level security and simply make certain that the user specified in you config file has permission to access the shared files.

For DOMAIN security, you need to send a user and password with every request. By default, Windows will try to connect by sending the username and password that were used to log in to the network. If this user does not exist on the UNIX machine, access will be denied. You can optionally use the Windows NT account database and or user mapping (via smbusers) to manage the security.

This also means that the username and password need to be specified on the command line for the smbclient and smbmount commands.

note: if you do plan on passing authentication to a windows nt server you can also use the user.map file on the unix machine.

If you get a chance to zoom over to Oreillys site and look for the samba book on there site and they have it in its entirety online for everyone to use.

www.oreilly.com