I am trying to setup a simple samba server. I have one windows machine and several linux machines running mandriva and KDE. Through much experimenting, I have still been unable to set this up.

I have gone into “Configure your Computer” -> Network Sharing -> Manage Samba Configuration. I added an entry for the folder I will be sharing and I set it to browsable = yes, public = yes, and writable = yes. Under the Samba Users Tab, I created a user. (I want all the users to have the same username and password.)

I went to Local Disks -> Share your hard disk partitions, and choose “Allow all users”, and placed a check next to SMB

I right clicked on the folder, choose Sharing, and verified the options under there.

I have also tried creating my own smb.conf file as described in a tutorial, but the smb.conf file seems to be reset to the auto-generated version.

Does anyone have any advice on how I can setup Mandriva to share a folder with a Windows machine and other Linux machines?

Thanks
--Donovan

This is the way to do it. Did you edit the file as root? If not, you will not be able to save changes.

There are some very good tutorials around. After you edit the file you have to restart samba. Once restarted, the changes take affect. There is also excellent documentation around. You may have to do some reading to get things going the way you want.

Thanks, I was finally able to get it working by editing /etc/samba/smb.conf on the server and /etc/fstab on the clients. I guess editing the files is better than using the gui.

thanks
--Donovan

Glad to hear you got it going.

Editing config files directly allows you to learn what controls samba. The gui way usually implies there is a "wizard" involved. That tends to insulate the user from what you are doing, the windoze way of keeping you in the dark. I do use gui's once I understand what I'm trying to accomplish, they can save time and effort.

You will find it seems more difficult to configure linux resources at first. After you start to learn things, it becomes easier.