Need pointer to Samba tutorial for newbies

Hi, I'm trying to set up Samba on a RedHat 9 installation. I have no
experience with Linux save setting up a box over the last few days. I'm
proficient with Windows, but I'm finding that's precious little help.
Here's what I'm trying to do: I want to run a small web site on our LAN,
available to the outside world. I currently have the site running on an
XPPro machine. Works great. I'm running the server on a high port number to
hide it from hackers, but I'd much rather run it on a Linux box. So I loaded
RH9 on a machine, set up Apache and I get the test page fine. Now I need to
be able to write files to the Linux box from an XP machine across the LAN.
(I'm generating the web site files programmatically in Visual Basic.) I've
been struggling with the Samba configuration and I can see the Linux box in
Network Neighborhood, but nothing I've tried has let me access the shared
folder. I've Googled a LOT and the sites I've found invariably are written
for Linux people unfamiliar with Windows, or students attempting to connect
to their school's servers. Can anyone give me a pointer to a site that gives
a howto designed for Windows users unfamiliar with Linux?
Thanks much!
Bruce

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Bruce Adams wrote:
> Hi, I'm trying to set up Samba on a RedHat 9 installation. I have no
> experience with Linux save setting up a box over the last few days.

No problem. We were all newbies once. Help is just a message away :-)

> I'm
> proficient with Windows, but I'm finding that's precious little help.
> Here's what I'm trying to do: I want to run a small web site on our LAN,
> available to the outside world.

No problem. That is easily done in Linux


> I currently have the site running on an
> XPPro machine. Works great. I'm running the server on a high port number to
> hide it from hackers, but I'd much rather run it on a Linux box. So I loaded
> RH9

FWIW, this is an old distro. you would be better off to upgrade to
something newer.

> on a machine, set up Apache and I get the test page fine. Now I need to
> be able to write files to the Linux box from an XP machine across the LAN.

No problem.

> (I'm generating the web site files programmatically in Visual Basic.) I've
> been struggling with the Samba configuration and I can see the Linux box in
> Network Neighborhood, but nothing I've tried has let me access the shared
> folder.

Easiest way to config Samba is to start up the "swat" server on Linux,
and point your web browser at the linux:901 URL (i.e.
http://linux_server_address:901/) Swat will generate a nice set of web
pages, giving you both a GUI access to the Samba config files, and a set
of online help pages.

> I've Googled a LOT and the sites I've found invariably are written
> for Linux people unfamiliar with Windows, or students attempting to connect
> to their school's servers. Can anyone give me a pointer to a site that gives
> a howto designed for Windows users unfamiliar with Linux?

Although it is a bit out of date, you can take a look at the SMB howto
at http://tldp.org/HOWTO/SMB-HOWTO.html

- --

Lew Pitcher, IT Specialist, Corporate Technology Solutions,
Enterprise Technology Solutions, TD Bank Financial Group

(Opinions expressed here are my own, not my employer's)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFD9frVagVFX4UWr64RAoZoAJ9N0ZjFGaZJakGU6Vkbwq zxiuM5gACg9apO
qhN6x6Sr2j5k4NKbofoNzYo=
=zzs0
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On Fri, 17 Feb 2006 15:40:50 +0000, Bruce Adams wrote:

> Hi, I'm trying to set up Samba on a RedHat 9 installation. I have no
> experience with Linux save setting up a box over the last few days. I'm
> proficient with Windows, but I'm finding that's precious little help.
> Here's what I'm trying to do: I want to run a small web site on our LAN,
> available to the outside world. I currently have the site running on an
> XPPro machine. Works great. I'm running the server on a high port number to
> hide it from hackers, but I'd much rather run it on a Linux box. So I loaded
> RH9 on a machine, set up Apache and I get the test page fine. Now I need to
> be able to write files to the Linux box from an XP machine across the LAN.
> (I'm generating the web site files programmatically in Visual Basic.) I've
> been struggling with the Samba configuration and I can see the Linux box in
> Network Neighborhood, but nothing I've tried has let me access the shared
> folder. I've Googled a LOT and the sites I've found invariably are written
> for Linux people unfamiliar with Windows, or students attempting to connect
> to their school's servers. Can anyone give me a pointer to a site that gives
> a howto designed for Windows users unfamiliar with Linux?
> Thanks much!
> Bruce

In addition to the samba howto, the entire O'Reilly samba book is
available free, online.

Have you tried ftp-ing the files? I think that might be easier. When you
send files to a commercial web host, that is how you do it.

Bruce Adams wrote:
> Hi, I'm trying to set up Samba on a RedHat 9 installation. I have no
> experience with Linux save setting up a box over the last few days. I'm
> proficient with Windows, but I'm finding that's precious little help.
> Here's what I'm trying to do: I want to run a small web site on our LAN,
> available to the outside world. I currently have the site running on an
> XPPro machine. Works great. I'm running the server on a high port number to
> hide it from hackers, but I'd much rather run it on a Linux box. So I loaded
> RH9 on a machine, set up Apache and I get the test page fine. Now I need to
> be able to write files to the Linux box from an XP machine across the LAN.
> (I'm generating the web site files programmatically in Visual Basic.) I've
> been struggling with the Samba configuration and I can see the Linux box in
> Network Neighborhood, but nothing I've tried has let me access the shared
> folder. I've Googled a LOT and the sites I've found invariably are written
> for Linux people unfamiliar with Windows, or students attempting to connect
> to their school's servers. Can anyone give me a pointer to a site that gives
> a howto designed for Windows users unfamiliar with Linux?
> Thanks much!
> Bruce

If you want to write files from Linux to your Windows box, you need to
mount your sharable Windows directories using mount.cifs or mount.smb
(see the manual pages); you don't need to run Samba.

Robert