[ale] Samba: Newbie Questions

[Kyle Beckman]

> > I want to make a Linux server visible in the Network Neighborhood.

Okay... Samba will do this, but the next part is a little tricky...


> > When it is opened via double-clicked, a browser is launched with
> > the URL, http://linuxserver/.

You can't do this.  However, I do have two suggestions that may be pretty 
close to what you want.

THE HARD WAY:
Set the security to security = share.  You'll see an area for the security 
level in the samba.conf file that comes with a default install from an RPM 
or a tar file.  This is going to set up your server so that it doesn't 
require users to enter a password to get into public shares.

Next, you'll need to create a public non-writable share in your samba.conf:

[sharename]
  path = /home/bar
  writeable = false
  guest ok = true

Make sure all of your permissions are set correctly or you'll get denied 
access.  Also, don't forget to create the directory that you're going to 
share (I killed about an hour at work on that one time... doh!).  Read the 
man pages on samba.conf for more details on setting all of this up as well 
as the internal documentation in the samba.conf file.  I might be a little 
off in the syntax of setting up a share I'm going off of memory here.

Here's the last part:  create shortcut to your Linux server within Windows 
and move it into your share.  Right click, new shortcut... you hopefully 
know the routine...  (You'll have to make your share writable temporarily or 
move the shortcut over to Linux somehow.)

Now, everybody sees your server in the Network Neighborhood and can open the 
Linux server... they'll just get a folder instead of the browser you wanted. 
  You could name it OPEN_ME or something like that, just rename the 
"sharename" from above to whatever (like I said read the man pages and the 
internal documentation).  Inside that folder is your shortcut to 
http://linuxserver/.  I know that is a few extra steps that you wanted to 
go, but it does accomplish opening a web browser through the Network 
Neighborhood to your Linux Server.

THE EASY WAY:
HOWEVER......  if you've only got two or three boxes (or everyone is 
authenticating through a NT/Win2K domain and you can script this), you can 
always go to the nethood sub-directory (I'm on Win2K at the moment and I 
don't have access to a Win9x box, but I believe it is C:\WINDOWS\NetHood and 
simply create a shortcut to http://linuxserver/ and it will immediately show 
up in the Network Neighborhood.  No need to even bother with Samba!

Either of those work for you?

~~Kyle Beckman
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