Samba is an open source implementation of the SMB file sharing protocol that provides file and print services to SMB clients. Samba allows a non-Windows server to communicate with the same networking protocol as the Windows products.


Samba GUI Config Tools:

KSambaPlugin is a KDE 3 plugin for configuring a Samba server.  It consists of a KControl Center module for all SAMBA options and a Konqueror properties dialogue plugin with right click integration for sharing a directory.  Samba, KDE required.

Configure Samba:

Below is my /etc/samba/smb.conf file. 

You can see that it is configured under the [global] section to connect to a windows workgroup called lan

Under the [public] section you can see that I've set up my /shared folder as a share.

With the settings below my windows pc can browse and share files with my Linux pc and visa-versa


Global Settings


[global]
workgroup= lan
browseable = yes
server string=%h (Samba %v)
dns proxy=no
name resolve order=lmhosts wins bcast host
log file=/var/log/samba/log.%m
max log size=1000
syslog=0
panic action=/usr/share/samba/panic-action %d
security=SHARE
encrypt passwords=true
passdb backend=tdbsam guest
obey pam restrictions=yes
invalid users=root
map to guest=Bad User
passwd program=/usr/bin/passwd %u
passwd chat=*Enter\snew\sUNIX\spassword:* %n\n *Retype\snew\sUNIX\spassword:* %n\n .
client use spnego=no
load printers=no
printing=cups
printcap name=cups
socket options=TCP_NODELAY
display charset=iso8859-1
unix charset=iso8859-1
preserve case=yes
case sensitive=no
short preserve case=yes
os level=20
;   preexec = /bin/mount /cdrom
;   postexec = /bin/umount /cdrom

[public]
path = /shared
public = yes
writable = yes
create mask = 0777
browseable = yes

Restart Samba:

Samba must be restarted everytime you make a change to the /etc/samba/smb.conf file.  To restart samba from the command line with /etc/rc.d/init.d/smb restart .

Browsing Windows Shares from Linux

In order to view a share on the Windows box from within Linux I'd recommend downloading one of the following GUI tools:

GUI Share Browsers:

LinNeighborhood is a Network Neighborhood clone for Linux to easily mount and browse directories on a Windows pc.  Samba, Gtk required.

Komba2 is a KDE tool that will mount and browse directories on a Windows pc. Once properly configured, Komba will automatically mount a Windows share, bring up the Konqueror File Manager in the mounted directory then unmount the share upon exit. Samba, QT required.