How to find/change machine name

[Claude Jones]

On Tue April 29 2008, Bob Latham wrote:
> Hi,
>
> As predicted I'm back with another unbelievably trivial question but I
> cannot find an answer. I am trying to get SAMBA shares working and failing
> miserably and I wanted to check the server name but having looked in every
> corner of the desktop and searched the help files I can find no clue as to
> how to find it or better yet change it.
>
> Any help would be appreciated.

You don't make it clear what you think the relationship is between your 
problems with Samba shares and not knowing your server name. For some 
insights into various issues that come into play when trying to get Samba 
working see the recent thread on this list "Samba won't dance"; you can find 
your Samba server name in the smb.conf file, which is located in /etc/samba; 
there are a number of GUI's that you can use to edit that file if you'd 
rather; 'system-config-samba' brings up the minimalistic Redhat configuration 
utility; if you use the KDE desktop, there's a comprehensive Samba 
configuration GUI built into the KDE Control Center in the 'Internet & 
Network' section. 

Things to keep in mind (approaches will vary depending on whether you're using 
KDE or Gnome):
You have to not only configure your Samba shares
You have to make sure that the smb and nmb services are started - you may have 
a nice GUI command called 'Services' where you can turn services on and off - 
look in your menus; else, 'man chkconfig' will explain to you how to use that 
command to turn services on and off
You have to configure your firewall to allow smb and nmb traffic, specifically 
on ports 137, 138, 139, and 445 - 'system-config-firewall' gets you into the 
redhat firewall configuration utility if you're not using any others such as 
Shorewall or Firestarter
Test each machine you want to participate in your network to see if you can 
ping it from the others, and whether it can ping the others...
There are Selinux related commands you must run depending on what you want to 
do - watch your Setroubleshoot warnings and messages to see if you're getting 
smb and nmb related denials.
Finally, you may run into some rather esoteric issues if you're attempting to 
run the latest KDE4 with DCOP errors - check your system logs for DCOP 
related errors if you think you've got everything else right, and if you're 
running some flavor of KDE4...

-- 
Claude Jones
Brunswick, MD, USA