Can't View Windows Network In Gnome

Hello people.... I need a bit of help.... I have installed an Opensuse 10.3 with Gnome environment.... When I click on the "Network Servers" button on Nautilus file browser, I can see a "Windows Network " icon, but when I click on it I get "0 items".. By the way the network in our hostel is a DHCP based ethernet connection. I have tried to configure Samba using manuals but it does not work... Please help

Hello people.... I need a bit of help.... I have installed an Opensuse 10.3 with Gnome environment.... When I click on the "Network Servers" button on Nautilus file browser, I can see a "Windows Network " icon, but when I click on it I get "0 items".. By the way the network in our hostel is a DHCP based ethernet connection. I have tried to configure Samba using manuals but it does not work... Please help
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take a read through this lot, it can be quite heavy going but read it a couple of times through and you'll manage it

http://www.swerdna.net.au/linux.html

it got me accessing my windows network at work on linux. if you want to mount a server in a home directory the command in console i use is the following (log into console as su):

mount -t cifs -o username=yourusername,password=hiddenword //ipaddress/serverdirectory /home/username/server

this assumes your username here is 'yourusername' on your windows server login and 'hiddenword' is your server login password. 'ipaddress' is your ip address and /serverdirectory is the directory on the server you want to mount and the /home is where you want it to mount to.

it looks more complicated than it is, took me a little fiddling but got there in the end with the above.

In addition to thestig's advice there's one thing to check straight up, because you see nothing. I wonder if you see nothing because the firewall is blocking Samba. So turn the firewall off to see. Turn it off in Yast --> Security and users --> firewall. Maybe the network will spring to life. Does it?

Also, there's a LAN primer for openSUSE on that site which might be worth a read first: http://www.swerdna.net.au/linhowtolanprimer.html

Sorry but thestig is right about it being heavy

Swerdna

First thing to check before anything else is that the hostel doesn't block the ports for file sharing at the network level.
Most public networks block this stuff by default for security reasons.

[EDIT}Sentence made no sense on the first attempt (note to self: read what you type before submitting gibberish)

the networking gurus are in on this thread so... i'm going