Samba
Samba is a program which allows "Network Neighborhood"-style communication between Linux and Windows. It is named after the SMB protocol, which is what Windows uses for "Network Neighborhood" communication.
How To
Restart the Samba Server
If you have Fedora Core, there's a convenient little "services" application you can use to restart Samba and several dozen other services. For the rest of us, however, there's a command you have to execute from a root terminal.
On Ubuntu, and probably other Debian-based systems:
/etc/init.d/samba restart
On Red Hat, I'm told the command would be:
/sbin/samba restart
(Possibly substituting "smb" for "samba"; ls the directory in question to find a list of services.) This is the same general technique used for restarting services, which should itself probably be documented somewhere. (The Samba share configuration GUI program really ought to have a "restart Samba server" button, though, even if it does this automatically when you change parameters -- because there is no way to know if it is doing this otherwise.)
Reference
- Wikipedia:Samba software
- Wikipedia:Server Message Block: SMB protocol
Links
- Managing Samba: Choose your weapon -- Windows network ID basics: seems to cover some useful concepts