Hi Jerry Thanks Jerry.
Would you believe it, the thing started working just after sending the last mail. I am not sure whether I really had a password issue or not but it was probably because a LAN cable was loose in a hub and some one moved it just as it was getting interesting. Anyway I realised sometime then that I could no longer ping the Windows PC and after ensuring all was secure it worked. I can now see and transfer data between PCs like there's no tomorrow. My only restriction is that it doesn't work between Linux and NT PCs (they can see each other but seem to hate having anything to do with each other). My Win 98 PCs and Linux get on just fine. Maybe I can live with this for the mean time and then while I'm learning Linux may find the utility I'm missing.... Since things are communicating, I have started work on my second goal - getting the Apache web server installed and operating. Thankfully this worked first try and I have tranfered my HTML files to Linux and we can all surf on to it locally. Once the wire wall issue is checked it should go able to go public. Next step is an Email server, which I understand is somewhat trickier - we'll see. By the way I see the mounting commands in the viewer software log files and may well also do things by hand now that I know them and know that they work - the viewer software is however useful because it works like it did in Windows and delivers the command needed without the frustration of sifting through (for me) complicated literature with a million options (great for experts) but a jungle for newbies. I also have nothing against learning Linux. I did learn a lot last year when I compiled GNU software under CYGWIN (Bash shell for windows) - then I had to learn enough to write script files and understand make files and some of the utilities (does take some time...). One learns more every day and has pleasure learning it - but the point is that a computer is there to be useful and not just to be studied. SuSE and Red Hat seem to be doing good jobs at making things simpler to use - the normal user probably doesn't need to know any command line stuff to do things which he/she wants to do (office, games, Internet etc.) I can imagine telling my little daugher that she must first go away and read a book about bash, vi etc. and then I will let her install her "Spelling program" - probably wouldn't go down too well and wouldn't help anyone. Cheers Mark -- To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the instructions: http://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/samba
