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.

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Share Windows Folder With Linux

In this tutorial I will show you how to set up a share on windows and then mount it on a Linux computer.

In the past, I have configured Samba shares on Linux servers to share files with Windows because our servers all run on Linux, but my colleagues prefer to develop in Windows. This is not ideal because the windows-side will «go slow», with Netbeans auto-complete functionality appearing to suffer. Another drawback is that windows realizes that it is a network mount, and will no longer show TortoiseSVN status emblems to indicate whether a folder has outstanding changes etc. Sharing the other way round with Windows -> Linux resolves these issues.

Check Windows Settings

Open your Network and Sharing Center.

Click on «Change advanced sharing settings».

• network discovery is on.
• file and printer sharing is on.
• password protected sharing is on.
• keep the default 128 bit encrypted file sharing.
• Allow Windows to manage homegroup connections (recommended)

Create the Share

Create a folder that you wish to share with other computers. I prefer to keep these folders directly in C: for simplicity. In this case I have created a folder called C:\code .

Right click the folder and click Properties.

Click the Sharing tab and then click Advanced Sharing.

Click Share this folder and then click Permissions:

Click Add to add a specific user.

In the box that now appears.

Type your username into the box and then click Check Names.

The computer should give the full system name for the user as it needs it. You can then click OK.

Now make sure your own username is selected, and then ensure that Full Control and Change are selected.

Go back to the Advanced Sharing Window and click the Caching button.

Click the option to disable caching. This seems to make things work immediately.

Mount the Files on Linux

Install the necessary packages:

Create a location to mount your windows share and mount it with the following script (make sure to fill in your settings as appropriate).

Thats it! You should now be able to view all the files in your mounted directory and edit them, or create new ones. If you find that you are unable to edit or create files, please make sure to re-visit the steps for adding yourself to share permissions and setting full control. If you are unable to mount the directory, be sure to check that you disabled caching, and that all your settings are correct, such as the windows username, and the IP address of the windows machine.

How to Mount a Windows Share in Linux

In this tutorial we will be discussing different ways to connect to a Microsoft share form Linux. Before we dive in I think it is important to understand the different terminology used when talking about Samba, SMB and CIFS shares.

Table of Contents

SMB vs CIFS vs SAMBA

SMB (Server Message Block) is a protocol used for network file sharing. It was originally designed at IBM in the 1980’s.

CIFS (Common Internet File System) is a implementation of SMB that was created by Microsoft.

SAMBA is an open source software suite and set of utilities used by UNIX/Linux to communicate with Microsoft Windows systems.

From the average user stand point SMB and CIFS can be used interchangeably. As you will see below, we will connect to the same share using both SMB and CIFS.

Mount a Windows Share Using GUI (Files / Nautilus)

You can easily connect to a Windows share using the Files application (formerly known as Nautilus) that ships with Gnome. For the sake of clarity, we will call it Nautilus.

Open the Nautilus application and select “Other Location” from the left places panel.

At the bottom of the screen you will see “Connect to Server” with a box asking for you to enter the server address. Inside that box is a diamond with a question mark in it that you can click for some help.

As you can see in the pop-up, server addresses are made up of a protocol prefix and an address. On my Windows machine named “MyMuse” I created a share called “SharedDocs”. So inside that entry box we will use:

We can also use the IP address:

This will bring up a dialog box asking for authentication credentials.

Select the “Registered User” radio button and enter your details. You have three options for storing your password.

• Forget password immediately – This will log you in and and soon as your session is over you will be required to provide your credentials again.
• Remember password until you logout – Remember your password until you explicitly logout.
• Remember forever – This option will store the credentials and allow you to easily return to the share.

Once you are connected, Nautilus will show the location on the left panel allowing easy access to the share.

Be aware that once that connection is closed you will have to go back to “Other Locations” and use the drop down box to reconnect. If you want to make the share persistently accessible from the left menu you will need to add a bookmark.

NOTE: If you do not want to type your credentials every time ensure that you select “Remember Forever” when authenticating to the share.

To add a bookmark, connect to the share then right click it in the left panel and select “Add Bookmark”.

If you have a lot of shares, or multiple shares on the same device, it will be hard to differentiate them. You can rename them to something more user friendly by right clicking on the bookmark and selecting “Rename…”.

Now we can easily navigate to our share as the name is clearly visible and easy to identify.

Mount A Windows Share Using Command Line

Using the mount.cifs Command

You can easily mount a cifs share from the command line using the mount.cifs command. Using the mount command requires root privileges.

First, create a directory to mount the share:

Use the mount.cifs command to mount the share at the created directory.

You can use the IP address as well.

Alternatively, you can use mount -t cifs with the same syntax.

Automatically Mount CIFS Share at Boot

Mount CIFS Share at Boot Using /etc/fstab

You can add your CIFS mount point in /etc/fstab and have the system mount it during boot. However, there are some considerations to make. If the share is not available at boot time the system will hang until the mount attempt times out, or worse, refuse to boot. This will cause a delay in accessing the system. To avoid this you can use autofs (next section). Also mounting it via fstab requires you to put your credentials somewhere in plain text. You have two options when using fstab to mount a CIFS share.

1. Put the credentials in the fstab file itself – This is a huge security risk as fstab is readable by any user. Someone can simply cat the file and see your credentials. IT IS NOT RECOMMENDED!
2. Use a credentials file – This entails saving your credentials in a separate file which can then be protected by permissions. Although your credentials will still be saved in plain text, someone would need root permissions to read them.

Because of the high risk of the first option, we will not even discuss how to do it. It is easy enough to use a credentials file.

First, create a hidden file in root’s home directory (/root/). You can call this file whatever you like. Most people call it .smbcreds or similar. In this file you need two lines, one containing “username= ” and one containing “password= ”.

Now set the permissions so it is only readable by root:

Now edit the /etc/fstab file and add the following information:

• Remote server share address (//mymuse/shareddocs)
• Local mount point (/mnt/cifs)
• Filesystem type (cifs)
• options (credentials file=/root/.smbcreds)
• dump option (0)
• check option (0)

Example fstab, last line showing the CIFS mount point.

Mount CIFS Share using AutoFS

The most obvious benefit of using autofs is that the share is only mounted when being accessed. If it is unavailable it will not effect your system when it boots.

Using autofs has the same credentials issues described above with fstab. It is also necessary to store your password in plain text when using autofs for cifs shares.

Installing autofs Package

Install autofs in CentOS 7, or Red Hat 7:

Install autofs in Ubuntu 18:

Let’s configure autofs to mount our Windows share.

Create Credentials File

First, ensure you create the credentials file as described above:

DO NOT forget to set the permissions:

Get UID for User

Now, let’s get our user accounts uid so we can tell autofs to mount the share as our user instead of root.

Edit auto.master Map File

Edit the /etc/auto.master configuration file. In this file we will provide a map of directories to shares for autofs to use. Add the following line to the file:

The first part of the above line is the directory we are using as a mount point (you can create a custom directory if you wish). The second is the file that autofs should look in for instructions on how to connect to the resource and mount it.

Create the Shares File

Next edit or create the /etc/auto.shareddocs file and add the following:

Restart the Service

Now we must restart the autofs service so it reads the new configuration.

Test and Verify

Now, let’s look in the /mnt directory.

The shareddocs directory doesn’t exist until you try to access it (auto fs). If everything above was followed, we should be to cd into that directory even though we do not see it. The directory will be dynamically created as it is accessed.

Bob’s your uncle.

Conclusion

In this article we covered 3 different ways to mount your Windows shares in Linux. You should now be able to mount an SMB share via the GUI, manually on the command line, automatically on boot and with autofs.

An important point I would like to stress is make sure you protect your credentials. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, please leave feedback or questions in the comments below.