networking for a newbie

[mrfinch]

I have two computers on my home network.


Desktop = Runs Gentoo
Laptop = Runs Windows XP

The Desktop goes through the Router via Ethernet and the Laptop is wirelessly connected.


I have all My Music on the Desktop computer and want to bring them over to the laptop via the network as other methods have so far failed (this includes adding files in disk mode and pulling them over, iPod is being a dick atm) - I can't find any Samba tutorials which are geared for an unexperienced user ... I've only got as far as being able to see the folders in "My Network Places" but haven't been able to open them (if you understand what I mean by that?)


I have installed SSHD on the desktop and used WinSCP3 on the laptop, but that doesn't keep the connection for the transfer of the Music folder and kills the internet totally on the desktop until I reboot (annoooyyyinngg) - so that went out the window.

I was wondering if someone could help me out by writing or directing me to a HOWTO to solve this problem. At the moment I have an iPod which is empty and useless, GTKpod never seems to work (no matter all the things I try from reading around the forums) - so I am just going to have to bring all the music across somehow.




Cheers for anyone who is patient enough to help me through this!

[msalerno]

Your best bet would probably be to learn samba, it's useful in so many ways. www.samba.org, these forums, www.gentoo-wiki.com and many other sites provide great documentation about how to setup a samba server.

By far the best samab document I have found is here: http://us2.samba.org/samba/docs/man/smb.conf.5.html

There are also tools to help you configure samba, webmin (emerge -p webmin) and swat which comes with samba.

There are countless resources that can be used. My recomendation is to read through the docs on samba.org to get a better understanding. In the mean time, try something like this:

/etc/samba/smb.conf