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If you haven't networked your small office/home office computers, ethernet prices are now so cheap you can't afford not to! I recently installed a three-computer LAN, including my dual- boot Linux/Win95 box (named Dave), my wife's WfW 3.11 box (named Kathy), and my Linux/Win95 portable. We share files among the three computers and print to the laser printer on Dave from within Windows.
The SMB protocol (server message blocks) does all this over IP. SMB/IP is built into Win95 and WfW; Linux uses the Samba program to talk SMB. A special challenge was to get Dave to look the same to Kathy whether Dave is booted in Linux or Win95. This technique could also be helpful if you are changing from a Windows server to a Linux server, and you don't want to redo the settings on each client. All the software is free, once you own the operating systems. My total hardware costs were under $100, including a five port 10 base T hub, network interface cards, and twisted-pair cables.
John Fisk's article on Samba in LG issue 20 was a great introduction to Samba. I used it to get started. Then I added printing from Windows to Linux, solved some file permission problems, and figured out how to make Dave look the same to Kathy under Linux or Win95. I'm sure what I did could be improved on -- I am new to Samba and only a journeyman at Linux, but this way works. If you worry about security, you may want to add passwords. Between my wife and me security isn't a problem ;-)
An example of Samba's power: my wife runs Quicken on Kathy under Windows. She transparently uses the Quicken data file stored in a DOS partition on Dave running Linux. She transparently prints from Quicken to the laser printer on Dave. She doesn't have to change any settings on Kathy when I switch Dave between Linux and Win95. And my settings on Dave are handled automatically on bootup. Way cool!
Here's how I did it:
I used System Commander to dual boot My box (Dave)to Win95 or Linux. I installed networking on both operating systems, using the same IP addresses. I named my SMB group "home." Fisk's article shows how to do most of this. My Linux release (Caldera) comes with Samba installed. Probably your release does too. Samba runs as two daemons: smbd and nmbd. Find them by typing
which smbd; which nmbdIf they are installed, they are probably in /usr/sbin. If not, install them. Caldera Linux starts them on bootup by running the script /etc/rc.d/init.d/smb. Note that if you change the Samba configuration file, it isn't necessary to reboot (at least using Caldera or Red Hat.) Just issue the commands
/etc/rc.d/init.d/smb stop /etc/rc.d/init.d/smb startand Samba will be reconfigured. Fisk's article points out that Samba may also be started by init.d. You don't want to start Samba twice, so check your settings after reading Fisk.
I created the following /etc/smb.conf file on Dave:
[global] workgroup = home printing = bsd printcap name = /etc/printcap load printers = yes guest account = dos [printers] comment = All Printers ; print command = cp %s /tmp/tmp.print print command = lpr -Pepson -b %s browseable = yes printable = yes public = yes writable = no create mode = 0700 [d] comment = DOS Disk d: path = /mnt/diskd/ public = yes writable = yes printable = no guest ok = yesThe [global] section of smb.conf tells Samba that my workgroup is called "home," the printer description file is /etc/printcap, and the user (or guest account) for dos services is "dos." To set up the user "dos" run the program "adduser dos" or just edit the /etc/passswd file. I had to edit /etc/passwd after running adduser to get things right. My /etc/passwd file has the following line for the user dos:
dos::501:500:DOS files:/home/dos:/bin/falseIn order of fields this line says the user is dos; dos needs no passwd; its user number is 501; its group number is 500; it is called DOS files (this field is just a comment); its home directory is /home/dos; and it has no shell privileges. The user and group number were assigned by adduser; they don't have to be 501,500. To test that the user dos is set up right, change /bin/false to /bin/bash and log on as dos. You shouldn't need a password and should get a bash shell prompt. Then change back to /bin/false to close the security hole. When I ran adduser, I told it that dos belongs to group DOS, and it added the group DOS to the /etc/group file with the line
DOS::500:The [printers] section sets up printing for DOS. The commented- out line "print command = cp %s /tmp/tmp.print" is a great way to debug Samba printing. I found this in the help file "Printing.txt" that comes in the Samba package. If this line is uncommented and the next one commented out, the print file from Kathy appears on Dave as /tmp/tmp.print rather than being sent to the printer. You can check whether it arrived OK and try printing it by running lpr. The line "print command = lpr -Pepson -b %s" does the actual printing. The option "-Pepson" says to use the "epson" printer description in /etc/printcap. My laser printer on Dave is called "epson" under Win95, and Kathy expects to see the same name under Linux. The option "-b" tells lpr to accept the binary print files that Windows produces. Otherwise lpr chokes because its default is to expect ASCII files, and the printer does nothing. (Maybe this fix is the same as what is called raw mode printing?) The "%s" parameter represents the file name being sent to Samba.
I created a section in /etc/printcap for the epson printer:
epson:\
:sd=/var/spool/lpd/lp:\
:mx#0:\
:lp=/dev/lp1:\
:sh:
Notice there is no "if=" line, i.e. no input filter that processes the binary print file. My printer is an Epson 7000, basically a HPIIp clone, so it expects the DOS convention of CRLF at line's end. If I tried to use this printer description when printing under Linux, which only sends the Unix standard LF, I would see the dreaded staircase effect.
The [d] section of smb.conf describes the shared disk that Kathy expects to be called "d," the same as drive D: under DOS. I mount it as /mnt/diskd in Linux.
I ran into a puzzling problem with user permissions (probably either my ignorance of standard Unix practice, or something weird about msdos filetype.) The user dos needs to have write privileges to the directory /mnt/diskd and all its files. But I couldn't make that happen using chmod, chown, or chgrp. As soon as I would reboot and mount the file system, /mnt/diskd would revert to the following privileges:
drwxr-xr-x 44 root root 18432 Dec 31 1969 diskd/The missing "w" for group and others did me in as long as root owned the directory.
I fixed this by editing the line in /etc/fstab for /mnt/diskd to be the following:
/dev/hda5 /mnt/diskd msdos user,noauto 0 0The important field is user,noauto, which means mountable by a user and don't automatically mount on bootup. The I added a line to /etc/rc.d/rc.local to mount diskd as user dos:
mount -ouid=501,gid=500 /mnt/diskdThis says mount /mnt/diskd with option (-o) of user id 501 and group id 500, which correspond to the user dos. If your adduser gives dos a different uid and gid, just change this line appropriately. If you have trouble mounting diskd on bootup, try logging in as dos (after changing the /etc/passwd line for dos to /bin/bash) and mounting diskd manually. When that works, go back and get the rc.local line to work right.
As John Fisk wrote: one thing about Linux, it hones your problem solving skills. If you have problems, look in Samba's logs and message files. On my system the logs are in /var/log/smbd and /var/log/nmbd. Messages are in the directory var/samba.
That's all it took for me to set up Samba. The Samba documentation shows a wealth of different configurations. At first I found them all daunting, but by chipping away, one problem at a time, things came more easily. I hope this article helps you get started. Who needs NT servers anyway?