My First Linux Server, Part 2 - page 3

Building a File Server

To keep things simple, we refer only to SuSE Linux 9.0 because of its easy-to-use YaST (Yet another Setup Tool) Control Center graphical utilities. Red Hat Linux users can follow the same general process and go to the references listed at the end of this article.

Start by opening up the SuSE YaST Control Center (YaST = Yet another Setup Tool) graphic utility. Do the following:

1. Turn off all the servers and clients and the firewall.Just open each of the server icons, and if the server program is running, disable it.
2. Add the Windows PC to the Host Names utility list. Hosts are computers on the network.
3. Open the Samba Server icon. Samba is the Linux program that makes your Windows network think your Linux PC is just another Windows PC, so you can share files over the network. The Samba Server Tool is a series of screens that help you set up the file server. Most of the choices are obvious. Make the following selections as you go through the screens.

• Enable the Samba Server
• Sharing Type: Select File and printer sharing.
• Workgroup: Add the name of your Microsoft Windows Network workgroup
• Authentication Details: Choose Authentication Back-End = smbpasswd.
• Share Homes to allow sharing of home directories, but do not select Share Printers (yes, Samba is good for print servers too, but let's not worry about that at the moment for the sake of simplicity).
• Shared Directories: Create the shared directories you want to see on the Windows network.