How to find/change machine name

[Bob Latham]

Thanks to Joachim, Chris, Tim and Claude who all answered my question,
what a helpful group of people. Cheers guys.


> You don't make it clear what you think the relationship is between your
> problems with Samba shares and not knowing your server name. 

Just checking everything that my limited knowledge can throw back at me. I
thought (wrongly ?) that \\servername\sharename was the core of SAMBA
sharing.

> For some insights into various issues that come into play when trying to
> get Samba working see the recent thread on this list "Samba won't
> dance"; you can find your Samba server name in the smb.conf file, which
> is located in /etc/samba; there are a number of GUI's that you can use
> to edit that file if you'd rather; 'system-config-samba' brings up the
> minimalistic Redhat configuration utility; if you use the KDE desktop,
> there's a comprehensive Samba configuration GUI built into the KDE
> Control Center in the 'Internet & Network' section.

To be honest, I have no idea what GUI I'm using, I know that's sad but I'm
starting from nothing with linux. 

> Things to keep in mind (approaches will vary depending on whether you're
> using KDE or Gnome):

How do I find out?

> You have to not only configure your Samba shares You have to make sure
> that the smb and nmb services are started

Ah. I had got as far as SMB services (guessed that much) didn't know about
nmb and have started that now.

> - you may have a nice GUI
> command called 'Services' where you can turn services on and off

Yes I have.

> - look in your menus; else, 'man chkconfig' will explain to you how to
> use that command to turn services on and off You have to configure your
> firewall to allow smb and nmb traffic, specifically on ports 137, 138,
> 139, and 445 - 'system-config-firewall'

Indeed it does and after reading this I have changed the settings to allow
SMB NMB.

> gets you into the redhat firewall configuration utility if you're not
> using any others such as Shorewall or Firestarter Test each machine you
> want to participate in your network to see if you can ping it from the
> others, and whether it can ping the others... There are Selinux related
> commands you must run depending on what you want to do - watch your
> Setroubleshoot warnings and messages to see if you're getting smb and
> nmb related denials. Finally, you may run into some rather esoteric
> issues if you're attempting to run the latest KDE4 with DCOP errors -
> check your system logs for DCOP related errors if you think you've got
> everything else right, and if you're running some flavor of KDE4...

Now that got complicated and I don't understand that bit. I have now moved
on a little but am now getting an error....

SELinux AVC Denial - flashing banner I can't stop!!!!!
SELinux is preventing the Samba daemon from reading user's home
directories.

I'm stumped again!

I suppose I should do some reading to find out what on earth SELinux is
and then how to switch some of it off.

Flipping complicated just to share a folder this linux stuff. <smile>


Cheers,

Bob.