NFS Windows/Linux

[mikebw at bilow.bilow.uu.ids.net (Mike Bilow)]

John Chambers wrote in a message to Mike Bilow:

 JC> Lucky you.  I've had samba installed here for  some  months,
 JC>  and  the tests  within  the  linux box all seem to say that
 JC> everything is fine, and smbd is sitting there eagerly
 JC> awaiting requests.   But  none  ever come  in.  The reason
 JC> seems to be that the W95 box that we want to use it with
 JC> simply insists that its "network neighborhood" is empty. 

You must manually synchronize the workgroup name.  If you know the name of the
Samba shared resource, then you can access it by manually specifying this on
the Windows 95 client side.  By default, Samba does not present "browsable"
resources, although I believe this was fixed in the later versions as of 1.9.00
or so.

Above all, remember that Samba only works with NetBIOS over TCP/IP, not with
NetBIOS over NetBEUI.  Since the Windows machines can only bind NetBIOS to
TCP/IP or NetBEUI, but not to both at the same time, the Windows machines must
all talk NetBIOS over TCP/IP instead of NetBEUI.  You may also see TCP/IP
called "TCPBEUI" when used to carry NetBIOS.

 JC> There seems to be nothing we can find in W95's menus or 
 JC> windows  that will let us explain to it about the linux
 JC> machine. The manuals we have don't seem to mention the
 JC> subject.  The idea seems to be that you just turn  it on, it
 JC> will explore the network, and all will be fine.  Nope; it
 JC> insists that there are no other computers on the network. 

Windows 95 expects all network resources to be "browsable."  The procedure for
accessing a Samba resource is the same as for any other non-browsable resource
such as an old LAN Manager server or an OS/2 Warp Connect peer.

 JC> Actually, there are two other computers on the ethernet, a
 JC> S5R4 and  a linux  machine,  and  they talk to each other
 JC> just fine.  Also, when I bring up Microsoft's Internet
 JC> Explorer on the W95 box and type in  the IP  address  of 
 JC> the  linux  box, it connects to the web server on the linux
 JC> system with no problems at all, thus proving that  the 
 JC> ethernet hardware  and the tcp/ip stuff are all ok.  But
 JC> symbolic names totally fail, because there's "no name
 JC> server" (though the S5R4 box can  query the linux's named
 JC> without problems, and can also route through it when hooked
 JC> up to an ISP).

"Name server" means different things in different contexts.  In the case of
Windows, it could mean either a conventional TCP/IP name server for DNS, or it
could also mean a NetBIOS name server for WINS.  Samba does provide NetBIOS
name service sufficient to keep Windows happy, although not the full Windows NT
implementation (which doesn't work anyway).

 JC> So samba may work for you, or you may  spend  a  lot  of 
 JC> hours  being baffled  by  why  the  W95  end totally fails. 
 JC> You probably won't get useful answers from the linux folks,
 JC> because the linux end is in  fact working. And you won't get
 JC> useful answers from the Microsoft folks, of course, once
 JC> they hear the word "linux".  (You should  have  installed
 JC> NT, you know.  ;-)

Nevertheless, Samba is a very well-supported product and is not specific to
Linux.  You will find that there are many users of it who have had no serious
problems, and that the support mailing list is solid.  There are also local
people, such as me, who have considerable experience with both ends of Samba.
 
-- Mike