Muppy-SMB to find and mount shared network-folders (final?)

[Mstar]

OK, let me start from the top.

What I want is for the puppy machine(s) on my network to be visible from the Win2K machines, and to/from each other. As it stands now, they aren't unless I run Muppy-SMB to "share" them.

I need to know what command I can use in /etc/rc.d/rc.local to accomplish that when puppy boots.

Because this is a small network in my home office, I'd like to be able to access all the files on each machine from any other machine, but having a "public" folder visible on each would be an acceptable Plan-B. I can do it now when they're all running Winwhatever (2K/XP/even 98), I just can't make it work in a mixed environment, or an all-puppy environment -- which is where I want to end up eventually.

It shouldn't be hard to do, I just don't know enough Linux or puppy to make it happen. All I really need (I think) is the command string equivalent to "Muppy-SMB -codepage 850" to execute the "share" function of Muppy-SMB from /etc/rc.d/rc.local.

Thanks all for taking time to help.

[sunburnt]

From the top;

Each PC must have whatever shares it's to offer to other PCs listed in:

/etc/samba/smb.conf

It's Samba that makes Win. (SMB) shares on a PC running Linux.
Win. allows & connects to shares just as it is, Linux doesn't.
For a PC to mount any shares at boot, lines in rc.local are easiest.

Note: If the WIn2K, XP, or Vista is being used... expect hassles with them.
Win98-95 don't have all the security layers that the newer Wins. do.

[Mstar]

This is what /etc/samba/smb.conf has in the machine I'm writing from. It's running Puppy 2.14 and has been renamed bigdog. My understanding is that this should make it visible to just about anyone who wants to see it.

[public]
path = /root/my-documents
public = yes
only guest = yes
writable = yes
printable = yes

Neither the puppy machine sitting next to it, or the Win2K machine in the other room can see it. It can see both of them. I can ping this machine from either and it responds, but I cannot connect to it otherwise.

Typing "mount //192.168.0.2/root/my-documents /mnt/public -o guest" from the other Puppy machine gives me a "failed: No such file or directory" error message. Ping 192.168.0.2 works.

The Win machines are rolling their eyes and saying "I told you so".

[sunburnt]

Look at the line at the top to see if the line: workgroup=(whatever)
has the same workgroup as the rest of the PCs.
Also the hosts allow statement can keep other PCs out.

[Mstar]

Yes, it's the same workgroup. The Hosts allow is:

hosts allow = 192.168.0.1/25 127.0.0.1

The network is limited to 25 addresses at the router. I'm using DHCP, and the Win machine is 192.168.0.4 at the moment. The Puppy machine is 192.168.0.2

It's invisible to the Win machine when running Puppy, but shows right up if I reboot into Win2K. The Win machine shows up in LinNeighborhood.

Maybe tomorrow I'll start delving deeper into the mysteries of Samba, but it doesn't seem like it should be this hard to do.

Thanks again for the help.

[sunburnt]

Mstar; Here's the line from my smb.conf file:

hosts allow = 192.168.0. 127.

There's no last number to the subnet filter, the loop back dev. is different also.

[Mstar]

Thanks for that. I'd already tried it after reading up on Samba.

The problem appears to be that Samba isn't actually functional in Puppy unless one installs it after the fact. I downloaded the Samba dotpup and suddenly things started to work like I thought they should have all along.

I have no idea why there's a smb.conf file if smbd and nmbd aren't installed, and I could not find them on any of the Puppy machines, except as part of Muppy-SMB. Chances are it's my fault, but I don't know how I managed to omit them.

I'm still wondering how LinNeighborhood works without them????

Anyway, now that Samba is running the machines are all playing reasonably nice, at least they're talking to each other. I'm still limited to the "public" folder, but that's workable for what I need to do.

Thank you for taking the time to offer your help. I warned you it was almost certainly a newbie-caused problem, and it was.

Thanks again.

[sunburnt]

Samba in Puppy is "cilent only", so LinNeighborhood works to connect to shares.
The Samba server package is needed for a Linux PC to offer shares to other PCs.
Win. does this out-of-the-box, Linux needs the Samba server, not just the client.
smb.conf is needed for server & client.

I've suggested that Samba server be made a standard part of Puppy.

[disciple]

Does anybody know how to stop the smbd and nmbd included in the Muppy-smb package?

They are much smaller than smbd and nmbd in the other Samba packages that are around, but the only way I can stop them is to kill them with htop