Some of you are on other lists and have given me a partial explanation of what I need to do to edit the lmhosts file. The help I got was not enough for me to figure it out. I have 2 win98 boxes and a win2k/redhat 7 dual boot. All behind a linksys 4 port switching router router is set to dhcp In order for me to actually get some use out of linux, I have to be able to see the windows boxes from within linux and have to windows boxes see the linux box. I suppose I should insert my apology for not being able to work without the gui here...if I can't *see* the boxes in network nieghborhood then for all practical purposes my lan is non functional. As I understand it, I have to go to freshmeat and get a prog that will emulate network nieghborhood to be able to *see* the windows boxes from the linux box... Any one know what that prog is called? As far as my lan is concerned, the lan is run on netbuei the linksys is dhcp-ing the Internet connection just fine- linux box included. When I take the netbuei protocol off the windows boxes, the lan is gone. The linksys will still share the Internet connection I was told in order to get the linux box *in the loop*, I will have to get the lan to share files via tcp/ip and in order to get that I have to edit the lmhosts file. I posted this to sysopt.com message board and someone told me that the lmhosts.sam has instructions on how to do this.... I couldn't figure it out. What *should* a lmhosts file be edited *to*? Should it have the ip addresses only? Do I have to save the file as lmhosts.txt ?? Does it have to have a (windows) file extention at all? Can the file be lmhosts (with no file extention)? currently the linksys is 192.168.1.1 it will add boxes as 192.168.1.2, 192.168.1.3 and so on. I even tried to raze all the networking to the ground- uninstalled everything, powered down the linksys, the cable modem, unistalled the nics and let windows redetect them. Started over from scratch- no joy I had the latest samba installed when I visited my local lug group. At the l.u.g. group I observed 20 people intently looking at consoles, vi, ssh-ing, ..only one was watching a gui I was lost... I guess I'm gonna have to go out and get a O'riely book and spend quite a few hours before I get a handle on what to *do* with linux? -------------- So am I correct in thinking that I have to get the windows boxes to share files via tcp/ip before I can get the linux box to be part of my lan? (what I mean by *part* of the lan is to be able to share files from network nieghborhood and it's linux counterpart) Can someone help me get the windows boxes to share via tcp/ip? Thanks David Jr. ======================================== Avenir Web's Computers Mailing List List Modes, Subscription, and General Info: Go to http://www.freelists.org/cgi-bin/webpage?webpage_id=11 List Archives: http://www.freelists.org/archives/computers Administrative Contact: weez@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Get computer help: http://avenir.dhs.org ========================================