, using either their login name or "homes" as the service name. Note that "make install" will not install a smb.conf file. You need to create it yourself. You will also need to create the path you specify in the Makefile for the logs etc, such as /usr/local/samba. Make sure you put the smb.conf file in the same place you specified in the Makefile. STEP 4. Test your config file with testparm It's important that you test the validity of your smb.conf file using the testparm program. If testparm runs OK then it will list the loaded services. If not it will give an error message. Make sure it runs OK and that the services look resonable before proceeding. STEP 5. Starting the smbd and nmbd. You must choose to start smbd and nmbd either as daemons or from inetd. Don't try to do both! Either you can put them in inetd.conf and have them started on demand by inetd, or you can start them as daemons either from the command line or in /etc/rc.local. See the man pages for details on the command line options. The main advantage of starting smbd and nmbd as a daemon is that they will respond slightly more quickly to an initial connection request. This is, however, unlilkely to be a problem. Step 5a. Starting from inetd.conf Look at your /etc/services. What is defined at port 139/tcp. If nothing is defined then add a line like this: netbios-ssn 139/tcp similarly for 137/udp you should have an entry like: netbios-ns 137/udp Next edit your /etc/inetd.conf and add two lines something like this: netbios-ssn stream tcp nowait root /usr/local/samba/bin/smbd smbd netbios-ns dgram udp wait root /usr/local/samba/bin/nmbd nmbd The exact syntax of /etc/inetd.conf varies between unixes. Look at the other entries in inetd.conf for a guide. NOTE: Some unixes already have entries like netbios_ns (note the underscore) in /etc/services. You must either edit /etc/services or /etc/inetd.conf to make them consistant. NOTE: On many systems you may need to give the nmbd a -B parameter to specify the broadcast address of your interface. Run ifconfig as root if you don't know what the broadcast is for your net. nmbd tries to determine it at run time, but fails on some unixes. See the section on "testing nmbd" for a method of finding if you need to do this. !!!WARNING!!! Many unixes only accept around 5 parameters on the command line in inetd. This means you shouldn't use spaces between the options and arguments, or you should use a script, and start the script from inetd. Restart inetd, perhaps just send it a HUP. If you have installed an earlier version of nmbd then you may need to kill nmbd as well. Step 5b. Alternative: starting it as a daemon To start the server as a daemon you should create a script something like this one, perhaps calling it "startsmb" #!/bin/sh /usr/local/samba/bin/smbd -D /usr/local/samba/bin/nmbd -D then make it executable with "chmod +x startsmb" You can then run startsmb by hand or execute it from /etc/rc.local To kill it send a kill signal to the processes nmbd and smbd. STEP 7. Try listing the shares available on your server smbclient -L yourhostname Your should get back a list of shares available on your server. If you don't then something is incorrectly setup. Note that this method can also be used to see what shares are available on other LanManager clients (such as WfWg). If you chose user level security then you may find that Samba requests a password before it will list the shares. See the smbclient docs for details. (you can force it to list the shares without a password by adding the option -U% to the command line. This will not work with non-Samba servers) STEP 8. try connecting with the unix client. eg: smbclient '\\yourhostname\aservice' Typically the "yourhostname" would be the name of the host where you installed smbd. The "aservice" is any service you have defined in the smb.conf file. Try your user name if you just have a [homes] section in smb.conf. For example if your unix host is bambi and your login name is fred you would type: smbclient '\\bambi\fred' NOTE: The number of slashes to use depends on the type of shell you use. You may need '\\\\bambi\\fred' with some shells. STEP 9. Try connecting from a dos/WfWg/Win95/NT/os-2 client. Try mounting disks. eg: net use d: \\servername\service Try printing. eg: net use lpt1: \\servername\spoolservice print filename Celebrate, or send me a bug report! WHAT IF IT DOESN'T WORK? ======================== If nothing works and you start to think "who wrote this pile of trash" then I suggest you do step 2 again (and again) till you calm down. Then you might read the file DIAGNOSIS.txt and the FAQ. If you are still stuck then try the mailing list or newsgroup (look in the README for details). Samba has been successfully installed at thousands of sites worldwide, so maybe someone else has hit your problem and has overcome it. You could also use the WWW site to scan back issues of the samba-digest. When you fix the problem PLEASE send me some updates to the documentation (or source code) so that the next person will find it easier. TESTING NMBD ============ As of version 1.7.00 it is possible to test nmbd to see if it is correctly installed. This can also test to see if it can auto-detect your broadcast address. Under some operating systems you can only test the broadcast part if running as root. You can test other functionality from a non-root account. To test from root use: nmbd -L TESTNAME where TESTNAME is the netbios name you wish to test. This would typically be the hostname of the unix host where you installed nmbd. It should return the IP address of the host you are looking for. If it doesn't then something is wrong with your nmbd configuration. (It is also possibe that you have a net configuration that doesn't send broadcasts to itself. Some Linux configurations do this.) If it fails then it could mean it is not correctly detecting your broadcast address or netmask. You will then need to supply the -B and -N parameters. See the nmbd man page for details. It has succeeded if somewhere in the output is a line like: ww.xx.yy.zz HOSTNAME which means it managed to look the IP correctly. To test from a non-root account use: nmbd -B HOSTNAME -L TESTNAME where hostname is the host name of the host where nmbd is installed and TESTNAME is the name you want to test. Typically this would be the same as HOSTNAME. NAME RESOLUTION =============== Probably the most common problem people have when installing Samba is getting name resolution to work. This is usually caused by incorrect settings for nmbd. One solution is to use nmbd as a WINS server, instead of using name resolution by broadcast. To do this you need to enter the IP address of the Samba server in the WINS section of your WfWg, Win95 or WinNT TCP/IP setup. As a last resort you can use a lmhosts file on the PC to resolve names, as long as you enable lmhosts name resolution in the right dialog box. This doesn't lend itself very well to update, however. The best solution is, however, to fix the nmbd setup. Experimentation and careful reading of the Samba docs should help. SCOPE IDs ========= By default Samba uses a blank scope ID. This means all your windows boxes must also have a blank scope ID. If you really want to use a non-blank scope ID then you will need to use the -i option to nmbd, smbd, and smbclient. CHOOSING THE PROTOCOL LEVEL =========================== The SMB protocol has many dialects. Currently Samba supports 4, called CORE, COREPLUS, LANMAN1, LANMAN2 and NT1. You can choose what protocols to support in the smb.conf file. The default