Windows machines can't see Linux box

I have just installed SuSE Linux on a PC. I would like to connect it to my Microsoft home network (a desktop and laptop running Windows XP). The Linux desktop, XP desktop and XP laptop are connected to a DSL connection using a SMC Barricade firewall/router. I am able to access the SMC Barricade and ping the Linux machine from both the desktop and laptop. I am also able to ping the desktop and laptop from the Linux machine. The Linux machine is not visible to the XP desktop and laptop using XP's network neighborhood.

When I try to directly access either XP machine from the Linux machine, I receive the message "Connection refused."

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Start YaST from the SuSE Menu --> System Menu --> YaST. Choose the Samba client, which will spark a wizard that will let you enter the workgroup. Enter the same workgroup name as the Windows XP machine and then see if you can connect.

Also, this chapter from the O'Reilly Samba book is pretty good.

The key thing that the article gives you is the method for finding out more information from the logs on the Linux server. It might give you a more detailed error message as to why there is a failure. It could be as simple as the guest account on the Windows XP PC is not set up correctly, but it's hard to tell without some better troubleshooting information.

Maybe there are hints on the Windows machine as to why the account is failing. You could use the Windows Event Viewer to see if the failures are registering there and if there are any kind of error codes that might be helpful.

This was first published in December 2004

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