How to share files between a Linux and Windows computer

The easiest and most reliable way to share files between a Linux and Windows computer on the same local area network is to use the Samba file sharing protocol. All modern versions of Windows come with Samba installed, and Samba is installed by default on most distributions of Linux.

Create a shared folder on Windows

First, create a shared folder on your Windows machine.

1. Open the Control Panel.
2. Go to Network and Sharing Options.
3. Go to Change Advanced Sharing Settings.
4. Select Turn on Network Discovery and Turn on File and Print Sharing.

Now, create a new folder to share or choose an existing folder that you’d like to share.

1. Right-click the folder and select Properties.
2. Go to the Sharing tab.
3. Above the Share button is the network name of the share you are creating. It should look like \\YOURCOMPUTERNAME\Users\YourUserName\ShareFolderName. Make a note of this network name to use later on your Linux machine.
4. Click Share.

Access a Windows shared folder from Linux, using Konqueror

Many Linux distributions use the KDE desktop environment and the Konqueror file manager/browser. If this is what you are using, you can follow these steps to access your Windows shared folder:

1. Click the K menu icon.
2. Select Internet ->Konqueror.
3. In the Konqueror window that opens, click the Network Folders link, or type remote:/ in the address bar and press Enter .
4. Click the Samba Shares icon.
5. Click the icon of your Windows Home workgroup.
6. Click the Workgroup icon.
7. Click the icon for your computer.
8. When prompted, enter the username and password for the Windows account that created the share.
9. Click OK.

Access a Windows shared folder from Linux, using Nautilus

Many Linux distributions, especially those that use the GNOME desktop environment, use the Nautilus file manager. If this is what you’re using, you can follow these steps to access your Windows shared folder:

1. Open Nautilus.
2. From the File menu, select Connect to Server.
3. In the Service type drop-down box, select Windows share.
4. In the Server field, enter the name of your computer.
5. Click Connect.

Alternatively, in the Nautilus address bar, you can type smb://ComputerName/ShareName and press Enter . For instance, when you created your Windows Share, if the share name was listed as:

Type smb://YOURCOMPUTERNAME/Users/YourUserName/ShareFolderName and press Enter . Note the smb: at the beginning; in Linux, use forward slashes instead of backslashes.

Access a Windows shared folder from Linux, using the command line

You can also access your Windows share from the Linux command line using the smbclient program.

1. Open a terminal.
2. Type smbclient at the command prompt.
3. If you receive a «Usage:» message, this means smbclient is installed, and you can skip to the next step. If the command is not found, however, you need to install smbclient. Follow these steps to install it.

Access Windows 10 Shared Folder from Ubuntu 18.04

I would like to share files between Windows and Ubuntu.

In Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, I could access shared folder on a Windows machine on my local network my navigating to Other locations in Files (Nautilus), accessing the Windows network, and browse. After upgrading to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, this no longer works for me.

How can I get access to folder shared in Windows 10 from Ubuntu 18.04?

3 Answers 3

There was a change in both Windows 10 and Samba. Some of the details are explained here.

The browse by just clicking isn’t working, but you can get there by entering the shared folder link in the address field. Use the server’s IP address or the computer name for the share. In the example I’m using the IP address of the Windows 10 server:

Use Keyboard shortcut Ctrl + L to type in pathname:

Typing that in the file browser will bring up authorization prompt. Use the credentials from your Windows 10 server. This will display all the available shares. You can then click on the share you want access to.

There are two changes steps you may have to do. Set client max protocol = NT1 for the downward compatibility in the /etc/samba/smb.conf file. Place the entry just below the workgroup = WORKGROUP line.

It should look like this:

Once you have manually accessed the desired share, you can make it easily accessible in the future by bookmarking it. You can do this with the keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + D .

You can easily rename your bookmarks to something friend and meaningful by right-clicking the name that appears in the File Browser’s sidebar.

Install necessary packages:

You may have to install smbclient , which will ensure you have the necessary dependents such as the cifs-utils and the actual /etc/samba/smb.conf file.

On 18.04, I have just had success with the following:

On Ubuntu: Install smbclient and add client max protocol = NT1 to /etc/samba/smb.conf as per L.D. James’ answer (see this post for more info).

On Windows: Create a folder in Windows to share, e.g. named shared . Make sure the folder is shared: I created a new user on Windows, keeping the NewUser name and selected a simple password (I first tried changing the name, but found that change was apparently only skin deep. Perhaps if I had rebooted. ). I logged in with NewUser , then logged back in with my admin account. I activated network sharing on my private network and for the folder specifically (see e.g. this post). Then I right clicked the folder and chose Give access to. , choosing NewUser (you may want additional permissions: see the just linked to post). Under the Sharing tab, the folder now has a network path: //COMPUTERNAME/shared .

Still on Windows: To gain access to the shared folder, I used the IP of the Windows machine instead of the COMPUTERNAME , cf. this.

To find the IP of your Windows machine, right click the network logo, open Network and Sharing Settings and choose Change connection properties . Take note of the IPv4 near the bottom.

In Ubuntu: Finally, open a terminal on you Ubuntu machine and execute

and provide the password for NewUser when prompted.

This mounts the shared Windows shared folder as a folder shared in your Ubuntu user’s home directory.

The command is based on suggestions from here, where there are also suggestions for storing login credentials.

I hope it works. Good luck!

Using Samba to share files between Linux and Windows

Your home network might have a few Windows machines on the ground floor, a Mac in an upstairs bedroom, a PocketPC on a nightstand, and a Linux box or two in the basement, all networked with a generic router. For all the devices in this familiar family setup, or even a scenario with thousands of users, the Samba suite is an ideal solution for file and print sharing.

Several cross-platform file and print-sharing solutions exist, but Samba and the SMB/CIFS protocol may be the easiest to implement in a home networking environment. Windows machines and Macs come with the functionality to work with with Samba out of the box, and you should only need to install a single Samba package for Linux machines. GNOME and KDE offer Samba client functionality built in to their default file managers, Nautilus and Konqueror, respectively.

We’ll focus on configuring and using Samba for file and print-sharing in a typical home network with Linux and Windows machines. You can choose from several Samba configuration GUIs, but we’ll go the old-fashioned route and point our text editors to smb.conf. The configuration file is commonly found at /etc/samba/smb.conf or /usr/local/samba/lib/smb.conf. Note that you will need to be root to edit these, or use sudo.

Samba will run on nearly any Unix-like system and can be found in the repositories of just about every Linux distribution. Begin by using your distribution’s package manager to make sure it is installed.

Configuring Samba

Samba is a very mature and complex package, so its configuration file can be long and complicated. You will have to trust that your distribution supplied you with a reasonably sound default configuration and focus on changing just a few lines in smb.conf to make sure they are appropriate for the purposes of a home network. If you want to know more about any line, consult man smb.conf .

Remember that any line in the configuration file preceded by a semicolon (;) or hash mark (#) is a comment and will not be recognized as an active setting. To activate the line, remove the semicolon or hash. It’s a good idea to add your own comments preceded by one of these characters so that you will remember the logic behind your configuration the next time you load smb.conf.

The first option to consider is Samba’s security level. This line will appear under the [global] section of smb.conf, where all Samba-wide configuration is done. The other sections, addressed later in this article, relate to specific Samba services (shared resources). The security level will most likely be set to the value user and look like this:

For a home network, you may want to consider setting this to share . The main difference is that with the user setting you will be required to log into the Samba server before you can browse its resources. This is a wise precaution on untrusted networks, but will be inconvenient when using resources you would like your entire household to have access to, such as a printer. With share enabled, you can still require users to authenticate themselves with a password to access particular resources.

While still in the [global] section, let’s move on to printers. If you use the Common UNIX Printing System (CUPS) (which most distributions default to), the only thing you need to do to have Samba recognize your printers is set the following lines accordingly:

printing = cups
printcap name = cups

Since you may be configuring these printers (and perhaps other resources) to be accessible without user authentication, it is very important that you restrict access to only known and trusted hosts – the computers in your household. Consult your router’s manual for instructions on assigning specific IP addresses to each computer in your home network. Once you have a list of trusted hosts, enter them into the following lines in the [global] section:

hosts allow = computer1 computer2 computerN
hosts deny = ALL

Although you have specified that ALL hosts be denied, any host listed on the hosts allow line will still be given access. The format of the IP addresses assigned to each computer by your router will vary. For instance, if machines on your local network are given addresses of the format 192.168.0.x , the following lines will restrict Samba access to local hosts:

hosts allow = 192.168.0.
hosts deny = ALL

Note that the final digit of the IP address was left off on the hosts allow line. This specifies that any IP address in that range be allowed. For additional security against external access, look into blocking Samba ports with a firewall.

Sharing directories and printers

It’s time to move beyond [global] and configure specific shared resources. Begin with the [homes] section. By default, your distribution may have this section configured to allow users to access their home directory on the machine running the Samba server.

If you have security = share set, this feature may not work as expected and users may be presented with home directories without logging in. If you are the only one with a home directory on the machine running the Samba server anyway, which is likely in a home network environment, it is advisable to remove or comment out (using hash marks or semicolons) the [homes] section and add any useful directories as shared resources individually later on.

Now you can begin sharing specific directories. Use this as a template for a publicly shared folder for which it is not necessary for users to be authenticated:

[Share Name]
path = /location/of/directory
guest ok = yes
browseable = yes
read only = no

Share Name is whatever title you choose (to the client accessing your server, this will appear to be the name of the shared directory). The guest ok = yes line is what specifies this share as publicly accessible. The browseable = yes line will make the share appear available to all users. Set browseable = no to force users to manually type in the share name to access it. Of course, you can set read only = yes to restrict users from make changes to the directory remotely.

Use this as a template for private shares that users must enter a password to access:

[Share Name]
path = /location/of/directory
valid users = user
read only = yes
browseable = no

Here, user is the user name on the machine running the Samba server of the person with access privileges to the share. Use these two templates to add shares for all the files users may want to access from the server machine.

Your server should be fully configured now. With what you added to the defaults provided by your distribution, your completed smb.conf should look something like this:

Before you leave the server machine you have a few more quick chores. First, enter any users that will be accessing the Samba server into the following command:

smbpasswd -a user

You will be prompted to enter a Samba password for each user. You can change the password at any time by logging in as the desired user and running smbpasswd . Now restart your Samba server using this command:

Accessing Samba shares from Windows clients

Head over to a Windows machine to try out your new setup. Your new server should appear in Windows’ My Network Places (look for the shortcut on your desktop, by default). Alternatively, open the Start menu and click “Run…”, then enter:

Replacing server with the name or IP address of the machine running your Samba server. A Windows Explorer window with the browseable shares from your server should open up. If you’ve made a non-browseable share, access it using this link:

Is is easy to make shared directories more accessible. In Windows XP, right click on the share in Explorer and choose “Map Network Drive…” You will be able to assign them a drive letter, such as Z:, so that they may be easily found in My Computer, even after a reboot.

In my testing on Windows XP with the security level set to share , printers are automatically be detected and available to use from the Windows machine. With user level security set, it was necessary to log into the server in a Windows Explorer window before trying to print. Your experience on other versions of Windows may vary.

Accessing SMB/CIFS shares from other Linux machines

Samba and Windows shares can be easily accessed from the default file managers of both Gnome and KDE. We’ll begin with accessing shares from Nautilus in Gnome. Open Nautilus and go to File -> Connect to Server.

Choose “Windows share” from the listbox and enter the server name or IP address of your Samba server. You can also click the “Browse Network” button and look in the “Windows Network” directory to search for the server manually. Click “Connect” and a Nautilus window will open with the browseable resources of your Samba server.

Accessing Samba shares with Konqueror is just as simple. To browse for your server, enter the URL remote:/ in Konqueror. For direct access, type the URL of the server in directly in this format:

Note that user and share are optional criteria.

Configuring printers over Samba is similarly easy in both these desktop environments. In Gnome, go to System -> Administration -> Printing. In the printer configuration application, select Printer -> Add printer. You will be prompted for your password. In the add printer wizard, select “Network Printer” and then “Windows Printer SMB” from the listbox. You will be prompted for a user name and password on your Samba server. Identify your Host and Printer on the Samba server and then move on to the next screen. Select your printer model and then click Apply.

To do the same in KDE, open the configuration center by launching the command kcontrol . Navigate to the Printers module and go to Add -> Add Printer/Class… In the resulting dialog, click Next and then select “SMB shared printer (Windows).” Click Next again and configure the username and password of a “Normal account,” if using user level security. Click Next another time and then Scan to browse for your Samba server.

Alternatively, enter the server details manually. On the next screen, select your printer model from the list. Click through the next few screens and give your networked printer a title to finish up.

Troubleshooting

If you’ve experienced any problems getting any of this functionality to work, turn to the Samba troubleshooting checklist. A quick trick borrowed from that document for testing your Samba configuration file for obvious errors is to run the following command:

Again, the exact path of your smb.conf may vary by distribution.

We have only explored basic Samba functionality here, tailored for a home network. More extreme usage scenarios are addressed in detail in the Samba by example guide.