Connect to Samba from Vista

[dnuttall]

I've spent far too much time trying to connect to a CentOS5 host using Samba from a Vista workstation.

What USED TO WORK in the "olden times" no longer works due to Vista, not necessarily Samba!

The trick now is to set up Samba on CentOS/Linux as per traditional method(s) but on the Vista side no matter what you have in your DNS and/or "hosts" file, you apparently MUST use the IP address instead of the DNS/hosts name assigned.

So for example, my CentOS host is named "centos" and can be pinged from Vista.

When I mount shared partitions/directories, I have to use:

\\192.168.0.200\my_shared_directory

when in a prior instance this would have worked:

\\centos\my_shared_directory

This posting on Tech Republic helped me:
http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=101&threadID=203099&messageID=2117523

HTHU!

Dave Nuttall
San Antonio, Texas

[SoftDux]

that article refers to CFIS & kerberos, not Samba. I use 'old-school' Samba in a Vista environment and it works without a problem.

Do you have nmbd running?

[NedSlider]

[quote]
dnuttall wrote:


The trick now is to set up Samba on CentOS/Linux as per traditional method(s) but on the Vista side no matter what you have in your DNS and/or "hosts" file, you apparently MUST use the IP address instead of the DNS/hosts name assigned.

So for example, my CentOS host is named "centos" and can be pinged from Vista.

When I mount shared partitions/directories, I have to use:

\\192.168.0.200\my_shared_directory

when in a prior instance this would have worked:

\\centos\my_shared_directory

[/quote]

You may need to enable the Network Discovery Service on Vista - I believe it's disabled by default. After that, Vista should be able to find services by name, not just IP address.

Hope that helps.