I wanted to be able to browser and connect to my windows network from the fedora machine. Here are the hoops I went through to get this working in FC14. Below I only detail how to setup samba to allow connectivity and browsing of windows boxes from linux. I do not detail how to setup smb shares on linux box to allow windows servers to connect to linux.
Install samba
I installed samba in the add/remove software gui.
- “Server and Client software to interoperate with Windows Machines”
- “Files used by both Samba servers and clients”
- ”Documentation for the Samba suite”
all for version samba-3.5.6-69.fc14.
Configure Samba. (etc/samba/smb.conf)
Open smb.conf for editing and change/add the following lines
- workgroup = <your workgroup>
- netbios name = <the name of you linux box>
- name resolve order = bcast hosts lmhosts wins
The name resolve order is important, I did not have a wins env and wanted to allow the broadcast method to resolve machine names. Without the bcast entry you will be unable to browse the windows Network. I was getting “Unable to Mount”/”failed to retrieve server list” until this entry was added. What I faound was that I was able to directly enter ip addresses into Nautilus and connect to windows servers, however actual machine names would not resolve.
Configure the firewall (ensure you apply)
- System\Administration\Firewall
- Allow the samba services client and server.
WinBind (not needed but mentioned for clarity)
It must be noted here that there is an additional service windbind, that can allow you to integrate into a windows domain and authenticate againt the users in that domain on the linux box. I was only using this within a home env with no PDC so had no need for this. I include here incase you are heading that way, you will need to look into this.
Other utilities I installed
It must also be said I installed a couple of other utilities to help me along the way.
system-config-services 0.99.47-1.fc14
services viewer (actually views daemons), an interface like windows services.
