Mounting and mapping shares between Windows and Linux with Samba

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In my previous article, Interoperability: Getting started with Samba, I covered installing and configuring Samba shares on a Linux server. The real power of Samba comes when Windows clients can communicate with Linux file servers. In this article, I will cover how you can access Samba shares from both Linux and Windows clients.

Install the Samba client packages

To access Samba share from Linux clients we need to install a few Samba client packages.

On the client machine, install the samba-common and samba-client packages.

Check for available shares

Let’s check if we can access our shares from the server. We can use either the hostname or ip address of the server. If you use the hostname , make sure DNS is working.

Create a directory that we can use as our mount point. I’m going to create a directory under /mnt , but you can use any directory you would like to. You may need to configure SELinux on that directory.

Now, mount the share.

Now that we’ve mounted our share, we can check the mounts with the following command:

Let’s make that directory mount persistently so it can withstand a reboot. Using the text editor of your choice, edit the /etc/fstab file. You can do this in multiple ways, but I’m going to demonstrate two ways to mount the Samba share at boot in /etc/fstab .

The first option provides a username and password for the Samba user in the fstab .

The other option is to create a credential file. You can call this file anything, but I would like to call it cred . I would like to place credentials files in the home directory of the user. In our demonstration it will be /home/user/.cred .

The _netdev option is important since we are mounting a network device. Clients may hang during the boot process if the system encounters any difficulties with the network.

Now create that .cred file inside the user’s home directory.

Next, add the Samba user’s username and password.

Finally, mount all filesystems.

Access a share from a Windows client

I will be using Windows 10 as my client machine with a workgroup called SAMBA . We need to create a local user account on the Windows machine that matches the username and password of the Samba user account we created in my previous article. Although account creation is not necessary, this will make things simpler when accessing the share.

Like I mentioned above, this step is optional and you can skip it completely. Although there are multiple approaches to adding a new local user on a Windows machine, for the simplicity of this article I will be using PowerShell. Launch PowerShell as an administrator and issue following commands:

Now that we have created a new local user account matching the Samba user account, we can log in to Windows with our newly created user account.

Access a share from Windows Explorer

To access the Samba share from Windows Explorer, start typing the IP address to our share in the search area. I am using the hostname of the Samba server. In my case, it is centos . You can also access the share by using the IP address of the Samba server.

You might be prompted to enter the username and password to access the share if you skipped the local user creation process. If you get prompted for credentials, enter the Samba username and password we created in the previous article.

You will need to enter the Samba share path every time you want to access the share. There is a better way to access the share by mapping a drive to Samba share in Windows.

Mapping a drive to a Samba share

To map a drive to the Samba share, open PowerShell and issue following command:

Accessing a Samba share on Linux and Windows is easy. With this basic setup, you will be able to access file shares from client machines in your network. With somewhat more configuration, you can deploy Samba shares in a domain environment. Samba can do more than file share. If you would like to learn more about Samba, read this article about Windows and Linux interoperability. This is a basic set up, but you can do so much more with Samba.

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How to Mount Windows Share on Ubuntu Linux

CIFS (Common Internet File System) is a popular file sharing protocol on Internet. It allows users on a Linux system access to a particular mount point on a windows share.

CIFS is an implementation of SMB (Server Message Block) — a protocol used for network file sharing.

This tutorial will go through all steps of installing and configuring relevant utilities in order to mount windows share on Linux system.

Installing CIFS

Install cifs-utils package on Ubuntu Linux by using the following command line

Mounting a Windows Share

In this section, the tutorial will show you the way to manually and automatically mount windows share on Linux systems.

Creating a directory on your Ubuntu Linux machine, the name of directory is arbitrary. In the below command line, I created a folder named winshare under /mnt

/mnt/winshare is the mount point of the remote windows share.

Windows share can be mounted on your Ubuntu Linux system mount point using cifs option of mount command

WIN_SHARE_IP is the IP address of windows machine.

If the $windows_user is in a windows domain, specify the domain as the following command line

By default, linux mount windows share with the full permission (rwx or 777). If you want to change the permission on your own, please use the dir_mode and file_mode options to set permission for directory and file.

You also can change the default ownership of user and group by specify the uid (user id) and gid (group id) options.

Once the windows share is successfully mounted, using command df -h for verifying the mounting windows share in Linux. In the following example, WIN_SHARE_IP = 192.168.1.8 and $shared_name = sharefolder

Secure CIFS credential

This section will explain how to use a credential file when your Ubuntu Linux mount the share using command.

Create a cifs credentials file: /etc/cifs-credentials. The file contains the below information:

Grant permission read and write to credentials file:

Now, we can mount the share using credentials with command as follows:

Auto mount the shares

If you manually mount the shares using mount command, when you reboot your Linux machine, the shares will be lost.

The file /etc/fstab contains the necessary configuration that allows automatically mount cifs permanently.

Edit the /etc/fstab file with your favorite editors (vim, nano. )

Then add the following line to the file.

Run the command to mount all the entries listed in /etc/fstab

Since then, the mount cifs will be persistent across reboots.

Unmount the shares

In order to unmount a share, you have to determine the mount point. In the above example, mount point is /mnt/winshare. Use the umount command:

If the mount point is in a busy process and the above command failed, run command with option -l (—lazy)

Conclusion

The tutorial has gone through all steps to mount a windows share on Ubuntu Linux using CIFS. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us.

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6 Comments. add one

I do not understand why you need to specify the Windows machine IP adress. These are constantly changing when using DHCP, which almost everyone uses. Does that mean that one has to go through the above procedure every day if one wants to connect to a Windows machine whose IP address has changed (people shut off their computers at night, likely getting a new IP address asigned the next day when turned on)? Is there a way that automatically detects the target Windows machine, as Windows does in its own networking system?

If IP address changes, use DNS names

This doesn’t appear to work in the latest ubuntu release.
If I do it from the command line, it requires the «vers=2.0» option.
Not sure how to fix it in the fstab. All I get is error(22) invalid argument.

What does tail -f /var/log/kern.log shows when you mount?

I’m not sure if it’s the cause of your error, but there’s a typo in the fstab line — where it says «dir_node=0755», it should say «dir_mode=0755». Double check that’s correct in your fstab.

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.

How to Mount a Windows Share Folder on Linux

Linux and Windows systems have major differences, with different file systems and protocols in use. Sharing files between them can be difficult, especially because they use two different sharing protocols.

That doesn’t mean it’s impossible to mount a Windows share folder on Linux, however. Follow along below to find out how.

Share Your Windows Folder

Before you do anything, you need to ensure that Windows has been correctly set up to allow for networking file sharing.

To enable this on Windows 10, right-click on the network icon in the notifications area of your Windows taskbar. From here, click “Open Network & Internet Settings.”

Under the “Status” category, click “Sharing options.”

In your Windows sharing options menu, make sure that “Turn on network discovery” and “Turn on file and printer sharing” are enabled.

Click the radio buttons next to both options to make sure this is the case.

Click “Save changes” to save your settings. Once this is done, open Windows File Explorer and locate the folder you’re looking to share with your Linux PC.

Right-click the folder and click “Properties.”

In your folder properties, click the “Sharing” tab, then click “Advanced Sharing.” Click to enable the “Share this folder” checkbox, then click “Permissions.”

Under the “Permissions” section, set the control rights for your folder. By default, Windows will grant read-only access to your files.

If you want to allow everyone to read or write to the folder, click “Allow” for the “Full Control” permissions set. Set these permissions to suit your own requirements.

Once you’re done, click “OK” three times to close each of the dialog boxes.

Your folder should now be shared on your network, ready for you to access from your Linux PC.

Install CIFS-utils

Depending on your Linux distribution, you may be able to mount your Windows-shared folder automatically in your distribution’s file explorer.

However, this may not work correctly. The safest way to mount Windows-shared folders on Linux is to use the CIFS-utils package and mount the folder using the Linux terminal.

This allows Linux machines to access SMB file shares used by Windows PCs.

To install CIFS-utils, open a new terminal window. For Ubuntu and Debian-based distributions, type:

For Arch users, type:

Once installed, you can then mount your Windows share folder from the Linux terminal.

Mount Windows SMB Share on Linux

You’ll need to create a mount directory before you can mount your Windows SMB-shared folder on Linux. This is where Linux will mirror the contents of your shared folder.

To do that, open a terminal window and type:

Once created, type the following:

Replace “Windows” with the IP address or hostname for your Windows PC and “SharedFolder” with your shared folder name. For the username, replace “account” with your Windows username or full Microsoft account email.

You’ll be asked to provide your Windows password before the mounting process is complete. Type this in, then click Enter. If you used the correct information, your Windows folder should now be mounted and accessible in the folder you created.

Sharing Files Between Linux and Windows

Mounting Windows and Linux shared folders gives you the freedom to access your most important files, no matter the operating system. The SMB protocol is well supported on Linux, so you shouldn’t find it difficult to continue accessing your Windows files and folders once you’ve installed the CIFS-utils package.

If you’d rather use a single system, here are five of the best Linux distros for Windows users you could use.

Ben is a UK based tech writer with a passion for gadgets, gaming, and general geekiness.