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Connecting to web shares using smbmount

This document describes how to connect to SAMBA file services on the Test web server and GoLive file area from a Linux client using smbmount.

If you have access to a share on one of the web servers currently and can mount it from a windows client (e.g. with Tools-MapNetworkDrive), you can also connect to that share from an (on campus) Linux client using the same share name, authenticating using your usual network logon/password pair.

If the share name is "MyDept-test" and the machine is "its-webserver" then the following smbmount example should work for you:

smbmount //its-webserver/MyDept-test ~/mnt/mydept-test/

After entering the above you will be prompted for you username and password. If the connection is successful you will be able to switch to the mount folder and view and manipulate the contents of the folder in the remote share as if they were local files.

Possible Problems

  • server and share names are case sensitive. The connection will fail if you don't use the correct case.
  • you must have an existing folder for the mount point. In the above example the folder "mnt/mydept" exists in the home directory of the current user.
  • some file permissions problems have been experienced by staff when using emacs where the editor tries to create working copies (safe-files) of the file being edited and sets permissions on the working file incorrectly. Appears to be related to the permissions samba presents (755) but the actual permissions applied as emacs creates files (related to Umask of the user?)

Disconnecting Shares

To disconnect a remote samba share you use the standard umount command specifying the mount point (smbmount actually calls mount behind the scenes) , e.g.

umount ~/mnt/mydept/

Further Information