Topic: Wndows can't find samba shares!! Please Help

[sam]

Sorry about being a nuisance but I'm stuck.
I've submitted a topic previous on this matter with no reply.
Any help would be appreciated. The problem is as follows:
My shares were working now there lost
I have no idea what to look for in /etc/smb.conf but something has gone wrong with "my shares". I usually mapped to my e-smith 4.1.2 box via
\1.2.3.4\ibayname and ticked the connect on login ie on my Win98 box.This worked fine for ages then its gone. No changes ... nothing.
Now I cannot get the ibay at all (for over a week now)
The following may help.
1. samba seems to be running OK on the e-smith box(see following)
[root@dhs /root]# /etc/rc.d/init.d/smb status
smbd (pid 1266) is running...
nmbd (pid 1280 1277) is running...

2. I have a group called managers which I (sam) am a user
The ibay called "staff" has group:managers write=group,read=group and Entire Internet(password required outside local network) and php,cgi enabled.
None of this has changed. It has been working fine.

3. I log onto windows as sam and the connection cannot find \1.2.3.4\staff saying "the network name cannot be found". Pinging 1.2.3.4 gives replies.

4. when on the e-smith server: I can log into the smb server as follows:
smbclient //localhost/staff -U sam
I get the password prompt and I then login correctly. I can then see the shares with ls -no problem.

It seems as though the windows machine is the probem. Although I still can't get see the shares on other machines as well!

sam

[stitch]

if you create a new ibay, can you connect to it?

[sam]

No-I've tried that. Same thing happens ie WIn98 can't find "the network" yet it all works fine from the browser.

[Grub]

Look if the workgroup is the same as your clients

[sam]

Yes all workgroups are fine.
However:
I did notice an anomoly in the /var/log/samba/log.220 file
THis is the log file for my computer (Win98 IP address of 220) hooking up to Samba.
If there are any Samba experts out there can you make sense of the following:
[2002/03/13 08:59:47, 0] lib/util_sock.c:write_socket_data(540)
  write_socket_data: write failure. Error = Broken pipe
[2002/03/13 08:59:47, 0] lib/util_sock.c:write_socket(566)
  write_socket: Error writing 4 bytes to socket 11: ERRNO = Broken pipe
[2002/03/13 08:59:47, 0] lib/util_sock.c:send_smb(754)
  Error writing 4 bytes to client. -1. Exiting
[2002/03/13 09:00:58, 1] smbd/service.c:make_connection(550)
  220infac (10.13.79.220) connect to service staff as user sam (uid=5001, gid=5001) (pid 8452)

STOP PRESS!! I actually mapped to Samba today (see the last entry in the log file extract about). But there are errors in this file and I'm not sure that its going to continue to work. What does the "lib/util_sock.c:write_socket_data(540)
  write_socket_data: write failure. Error = Broken pipe" error mean?

Again any help is appreciated.
sam