Linux networking help

[Nuvo]

I wonder if there is any one out there that help me solve a problem I'm experiencing with a Linux distro disc.

I have two netbooks each installed with Windows XP Home edition. Both machines are connected via a Netgear DG834 wired router. Internet access and file transfers are working without issue in Windows.

The problem I have is when I boot from a Linux SuSe distro CD. The disc contains backup software which can be used for creating and restoring images of most operating systems.

Linux detects the NIC successfully and I can configure its IP address/Network mask and default gateway (the router IP address). No DNS or Wins servers are configured.

The problem is that it is unable to find the network path of the other machine.
I tried entering the path manually and it still fails to find it.
I know that the network card is properly configured as I am able to ping the router from this "Linux" machine but I can't ping the NIC address of the other netbook.
<edit> I *can* ping the target machine succesfully.

I don't have much *nix experience so bash commands are new to me. I did try to browse the LAN using the following command:

I believe typing "nmblookup -M -- -" should give me a IP list of network master browsers. The name query fails on the broadcast address 192.168.0.255.

Is any able to help me troubleshoot this please?

Cheers,
Rob.

[prj]

What version of samba do you have on the SUSE distro?
Do you even have samba?

Where do you enter the path and in which way?
Try using smb://<ip>

I don't remember if SUSE uses KDE or Gnome. IIRC Konqueror accepted windows-like paths (\\ip\share), but Nautilus preferred smb://ip/share or //ip/share.

Give some more info, if you can ping the machine and your network works, then you should be able to connect to that machine and mount samba/cifs file systems.

From the top of my head, the command line to mount a CIFS share was something like:
mount -t cifs //host/share /mountpoint

HTH

[prj]

P.S. Try using the IP instead of the name of the machine - name lookup might not work, but you should be able to connect directly just fine.

[Nuvo]

Thank you for replying.

I don't think this distro has samba, just bash and the imaging software as far as I know, although I would need to check that.

Network paths are specified with //ip/share_folder or //computer_name/share_folder
The mounting point is specified with /mnt/computer_name/share_folder

Mounting of network drives is done via the imaging software menu rather than on the command line. I dropped to the shell to try and diagnose the problem.

Oddly enough minutes after posting I tried automatically detecting the NIC settings as before only this time it was able to find the network drive. I can't explain why happened as the addresses detected are the same as those I entered myself.
DHCP saved the day anyway.

Thanks again.

[prj]

Well the distro should have samba for cifs support, else you are not able to connect to anything as samba is what is used for Win share connectivity.

Seems your issue was elsewhere though. Oh well, as long as it works.

[Nuvo]

Well the distro should have samba for cifs support, else you are not able to connect to anything as samba is what is used for Win share connectivity.

Seems your issue was elsewhere though. Oh well, as long as it works.

I'll take your word for it as Linux is not something I have much exposure to.
I now realise that it was the software firewall that was blocking the broadcasts ARP requests which was the source of the problem. Seems obvious now.

[Sonic]

Glad you got it sorted, but just to clarify, you can mount cifs without samba

[prj]

Can you? You did need something from there though... Oh well, it has been a few years.