linux samba configuration??? and running remote applications

[bruce]

hi...

i'm in need of a way to access data on the hard drive of one linux box, from
another linux box. i've seen reference to setting up samba as a way to
accomplish this. information that i've seen from google doesn't give me a
good/quick way of setting this up??

does anybody have any pointers/comments on how to set this up, so i can have
multiple systems able to share/access the hard drives on the various
machines...???

also, does anyone have an idea as to how i can run a perl command/app on
machine "A" while i'm on machine "B"?

i have linux rh8.0 with perl 5.8. i also appear to have samba in the
services, although it doesn't appear to be installed.

thanks

-bruce