Topic: Windows XP Home

[Tim Litwiller]

What are the gotcha on connecting to an e-smith server with XP Home?  I have a firend that is planning on upgrading to xp on his 2 home computers as soon as he can buy it.  He is currently running a win98 and a win me machine connecting to an e-smith for his internet sharing. His is e-smith is setup as a domain controller.

[Patrick Basile]

Tim,

I have not setup XP to connect to my e-smith/SME servers, but have been working with Windows 2000 clients against my Linux e-smith "PDC" for several months.  For the most part it works just fine, though the setup can be tricky.  I'd recommend you take a look at Darrell May's excellent HOW TO on upgrading Samba to version 2.2.2 - which will allow you to join 2k clients.

http://www.myezserver.com/docs/mitel/samba-upgrade-howto.html

I have just done a quick search of several newsgroups, and didn't see a definitive answer on this; HOWEVER the folks at Mitel and many of the dedicated developers monitoring this phorum have spent a great deal of time recently working on Samba issues - so you will probably get several responses to your post here.  Based on what I have read on newsgroups it looks like some people are having success running XP clients against Samba 2.2.2.

Good luck.

Regards,
Patrick

[Tim Litwiller]

The reason I ask about XP Home is because it will not login to a win nt/2000 domain So I wasn't sure if there was some work around for Samba that might make this work

[guestFF]

Hi,

Don't know about XP Home, but XP Professional works very well with V5.0 & samba 2.2.1a as a PDC & domain logon's

HFW

[kelp]

no problems using winxp pro here either.

[jose velez]

Windows XP Home will not see any server in Domain (not even w2k server) and microsoft also removed the Netware client.

XP Home will see e-smith only in workgroup

[Greg Zartman]

I'm going to resist Windows XP as long as humanly possible, but I am curious about something.  Is it your understanding that M$ has removed Client for Microsoft Networks network service in Win XP Home?  I guess I'm a bit surprised that they'd do something like this, but it seems a little strange.  

Greg Zartman

[Tim Litwiller]

that is my take on it as well,  I guess they did it to force office users to get the $200 version.

[Greg Zartman]

This is what's confusing to me.  The difference between a domain and a workgroup is actually a very fine line.  In fact a domain is nothing more than a workgroup with the ability to form special security agreements between machines and a centralized database of user accounts.

Win 9x/Me, for example, can participate in a domain, but it couldn't "join" the domain.  That is, it can access domain resources as long as the user provids a valid username and password.  

I can't see why M$ would go backwards and make Win XP home even more archaic than Win 9x by removing the ability for it to even see a domain.  Actually, I'm 99% sure that if Win XP home can't see a domain, then is wouldn't be able to see a typical Windows workgroup.  Again, I have no expereince with Win XP so maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Greg

[Tim Litwiller]

they have a wizard like in winme to set up a home network.  But I don't know what the specifics are.  I haven't had much time to play with it yet.