Windows 8 and Linux on the network
Connections
Samba configuration often fails when users overlook little things. We show you how to configure a Linux system for file sharing on a Windows 8 peer-to-peer network.
When you are setting up heterogeneous file and print sharing on a Linux system, Samba plays a crucial role. Whether file sharing works transparently, requires configuration, or does not work at all depends on several factors (see the "Theory and Practice" box).
If you want your Linux system to participate in the CIFS/SMB file-sharing services native to Windows, you need to install the samba package on your Linux system. If you only want to access a Windows share on a Windows 8 system, all you need is the smbclient package. In this article, I describe how to set up peer-to-peer networking between Windows 8 and Linux.
Samba from Simple to Complex
The complexity of mapping Windows networks on Linux with Samba is compounded by the fact that Samba needs to map accounts and permissions reliably and handle machine accounts. If you want to know how many options are set on a running Samba server, you can check out the default values by typing:
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