Can Anyone Help Me Please?????

I've been given an impossible task by my boss at work
I have been asked to learn Perl. I am not incredibly brilliant with computers so it's proving to be a bit of a struggle.

I have a base unit from work with Mandrake 9 installed which I have connected to my router. I need to be able to access the base unit through my own PC which is Windows XP Pro.

The problem I am having is that I cannot connect to the base unit to my PC. They both see one another via pinging but XP keeps asking me for a user name and password when I'm trying to connect through network places. The username and password on the base unit or root password don't work

Can anybody give me any help here pleeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaassssssssseeeeeeeeee?

I know it's cheeky to ask but if anyone would possibly be prepared to help a desperate girl out I'd really appreciate it.

I guess you have setup Samba to do the Windows networking.... have you got the latest version? The Windows XP SMB Protocol is different to the other versions of windows so you need to ensure it has correct support for it. Also make sure that encrypted passwords are on in samba. You also need to create a user and password for samba seperately to your unix login.

Thanks for your very speedy reply.
To be honest with you, the base unit was set up for me installed with Linux, and I was basically packed off for the weekend to learn Perl! ARGH! I have been out and bought Linux for dummies and Linux unleashed books but Im' not sure how to set up Samba

I could do with someone who could perhaps chat with me on line via MSN or Yahoo? Would you be willing to do that?

KJ

Sounds like Samba is already setup. (it would not prompt for a password else)
You have to login to the linux server as root (via telnet, ssh or on the local console). then you can use:

smbpasswd -a <username> <password>

to set the password for samba. they can be different from the unix logins (!).

Learning perl over the weekend is IMHO impossible. Unless you are *very* *very* experienced in C or PHP and unix (sed/awk/grep would help).
You can get your hands on it in that time, but probably not much more...

for further setup of samba, edit /etc/inetd.conf and activate the line with "swat" and restart inetd (killall -HUP inetd). then you can access the configuration program in your browser via "http://linuxserver:901". There you can make Shares for your cgi-bin directory for easy access. And there you can change passwords too...

M.

PMFJI, but it looks like you have a Linux system set up at work and you need to use your XP at home as a workstation to connect to it.

Using Samba would only allow you to access your own Linux user directories on the Linux server, but only using the software on your XP machine. It would not allow you to run the perl on the Linux machine on your XP.

For that, you would need to telnet or ssh into the Linux system using your user name and password. Please note that you are not allowed to telnet in as root, though I think you can ssh in as root.

However, if the objective is for you to learn Perl (sorry, I do not believe that one weekend is enough), then you should be able to write perl scripts and run them as a mere user, so changing to root (su - command) would not be needed. But be aware that telnet will only get you to a command-line shell (similar-to but much more powerful than DOS, though a bit less user-friendly to the uninitiated), so you would also need to use a text-based editor like vi. (I just heard a lot of people cringing) Personally, I like vi and often use it in DOS as well, but again it can seem daunting to the unitiated.

For that matter, if the only objective is to learn Perl, then you should be able to work with the Win32 port of Perl that ActiveState distributes for free. I've been using it on Win98/WinME/Win2000 for a few years and I am not aware of any problems the latest version has with XP. The advantage of this approach is that you could use the editors on your XP that you are already comfortable with and then run the script in a DOS window.

You say that you are "not incredibly brilliant with computers". Have you programmed before? A lot of Perl syntax comes from C, which is also true of Java and Javascript. Perl also incorporated a lot from Unix shell programming, especially in the special uses for the different kinds of quotes (" vs ' vs `), such as the idea of inserting the value for a variable where it is used in a double-quoted string. Other than that, getting used to scalars ($something) vs lists (@list_o_things) vs hashes (%named_pairs) is the major conceptual hurdle. Besides the special variables (eg, $_, $?, etc) and the use of default variables ($_ and @_).

I do like Perl and find it very useful for writing utility scripts to process through ASCII data files (such as we generate during equipment tests).

Good luck with your assignment.

please read the rulz b4 u post here.
RULES

Thank you, I was already waiting for that...
Impossible that three guys respond nicely just because she said in her first post that she is a "girl in desperate need of help"...

funny, ain´t it?

Well those rules are from the PHP forum. Not everyone goes to the PHP forum so that is why i didnt mention it. You cant really flame someone for not reading the rules if they cant see them. In the PHP forum they are at the top of the forum and hard to miss, (yet easy to ignore ). I think those rules need to be edited so they are a bit less PHP specific and posted as a sticky in each forum, including Troll Land aka Beginners Forum