Configuring Windows Clients

Now that all the services are in place, we have to configure your Windows clients to use everything that’s been set up. Let’s take this one step at a time.

Putting your client on the LAN

The first thing we need to do is to make the client ‘visible’ on the LAN by assigning it an IP address. This is easily obtained from the DHCP server running on the network.

1. Open Control Panel>Network
2. Click Add> Client> Client for Microsoft Networks
3. Click Add> Protocol> TCP/IP
4. Click File and Print Sharing, and enable both if you want to share files from the client.
5. Click Client For Microsoft Networks> Properties and check the box marked Log on to Windows NT Domain. Put the name of the domain, for example,
   
   PCQLINUX. Click OK.
6. Click TCP/IP>Properties>IP Address Tab>Obtain IP address automatically. All the other tabs need not be filled in, since all the information regarding the gateway, DNS, WINS, etc, will be supplied by the DHCP server. Click OK.
7. Go to the Identification Tab. Put in a computer (NETBIOS) name for your machine and a Work group name.
8. In the Access Control Tab, check User Level access control and put in the name of your Samba Domain
   
   (PCQLINUX) in the box.
9. Click OK and restart.
10. After the ceremonial reboot, you should be pre sented with the Domain Logon Box. Once you’ve logged in with the correct Samba username and password, you can test if the other network infor- mation has been picked up by the client by click- ing Start>Run and typing in
    
    winipcfg.

Click on More Info after this. You should see:

11. Now double click on Network Neighborhood and you should be able to browse to the Samba server.

Configuring Web browsers

Now we need to configure the browser. Both Netscape and IE, versions 4.0 and above support Proxy AutoConfiguration (PAC). This makes it much easier for a system administrator to configure browsers. Please refer to A Proxy Server with Squid (page 129) in this issue for how to create a PAC file.

In Internet Explorer

1. Open Tools>Internet Options.
2. On the Connections Tab, click on LAN Settings.
3. Check Use automatic configuration script and enter the proxy configuration URL
   
   
   
   http://proxy.pcqlinux.com/proxy.pac

In Netscape Navigator

1. Open Edit> Preferences> Advanced> Proxies.
2. Check Automatic Proxy Configuration and enter the URL
   
   http://proxy.pcqlinux.com/proxy.pac

Configuring the mail client

Now for setting up the mail client to send and receive mail to and from our mail server.

In Outlook Express

1. Open Tools> Accounts> Mail Tab and click Add
2. Type in a display name for the mail account. Click Next
3. Give the user’s e-mail address, for example, user@pcqlinux.com. Click Next
4. The incoming mail server is a POP3 server. If you have made the appropriate DNS entries then it should be mail.yourdomain.com, for example, mail.pcqlinux.com
5. Similarly, the outgoing mail server will be smtp.yourdomain.com, for example, smtp.pcqlinux.com. Click Next
6. In the Account Name and Password field, enter the user’s name and password. Click Next and then Finish.

In Netscape Navigator

1. Open Edit> Preferences> Mail and Newsgroups> Mail servers.
2. In the Incoming Mail Servers Box, click Add. In the General Tab, write
   
   
   
   Server Name: mail.pcqlinux.com
   
   
   Server Type: POP3
   
   
   User Name: user
   
   
   Click OK.
   
   
   
3. In the Outgoing Mail (SMTP) field enter smtp.yourdomain.com, for example, smtp.pcqlinux.com
4. Click OK to save the settings.

For everyone to enjoy these new facilities, you have to do the above for every workstation on the LAN.

Sony Philip is a technology research consultant with Exocore Consulting