Samba

Mount a Windows share on Linux

It's pretty easy to mount a Windows network share on Linux. The mount command supports filesystem type cifs (and smbfs). Assuming you want to mount the folder \\server\SharedDocs. You may need to resolve your Windows \\server name to an IP address. Assuming that \\server resolves to 192.168.2.4. I find it easier than trying to use the Windows group names.

Using cifs

mkdir shareddocs
sudo mount -t cifs -o user=Guest //192.168.2.14/shareddocs shareddocs

Old style using smbfs

mkdir shareddocs
sudo mount -t smbfs -o username=Guest //192.168.2.14/shareddocs shareddocs

Make SMB mounts persistent with fstab

Add the following to /etc/fstab and /media/SharedDocs will be automatically mounted when you reboot or run "mount -a". The IP address, 192.168.2.4, may be replaced with the Windows server name. You may also need to set username and password.

Using cifs

//192.168.2.14/shareddocs /media/shareddocs cifs auto,username=guest,password=,rw,user 0 0

Mount with a given group of admin and forced file and dir permissions.

//192.168.2.14/shareddocs /media/shareddocs cifs auto,user=YOUR_WINDOWS_LOGIN,password=YOUR_WINDOWS_PASSWORD,rw,gid=admin,file_mode=00666,dir_mode=00777 0 0

Old style using smbfs

//192.168.2.14/shareddocs /media/shareddocs smbfs auto,username=guest,password=,rw,user 0 0

Browse with smbclient

Don't put a trailing slash on the share name!

smbclient -UGuest //192.168.1.1/SharedDocs

Errors

mount_data version 1919251317 is not supported

If you get an error something like this:

smbfs: mount_data version 1919251317 is not supported

Then if probably means you don't have the smbfs module loaded. Under Ubuntu this is pretty easy to fix. Just run:

sudo apt-get install smbfs

mount error 6

If you get an error like this:

mount error 6 = No such device or address
Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g.man mount.cifs)

then you probably used the wrong share name. The remote share does not exist.