Access samba share from windows

If you are searching for a compatible and open source software for accessing and sharing files, folders and other data, then come across the Samba share. It provides a cross-platform adaptable environment between Windows and other systems. In this tutorial, I have outlined every ins and outs on how to access Samba share from Windows. So, go over it, try accessing Samba share from your Windows and leverage the benefits of this interoperable service.

Key Takeaways

• Learning basic commands of the command prompt, PowerShell.
• Understanding the fact of accessing Samba shares from Windows.
• Learning how to connect and disconnect Samba drives.

Requirements

• Users must have Samba already installed and configured properly.
• Users must have Samba connection on.

Process Flow Chart

[Windows Used Throughout the Tutorial: Windows 10]

You can easily access samba share from Windows only employing some compact and effortless steps. Here, I am going to introduce two types of methods that will help you to access the Samba share.

In the following section, I will show two cases of GUI (Graphical User Interface) for accessing Samba share from Windows.

To access Samba share using File Explorer follow the manual procedure shown below:

Steps to Follow >

➊ Press WIN+E or you can click on the Folder icon like the image below to open file explorer:❷ Enter the path of the Samba share in the address bar like the format below and click ENTER:

\\192.168.231.128\sambashare

Here, ‘192.168.231.128’ is my system’s IP address and ‘sambashare’ is the folder I want to share.

❸ Now, enter your network credentials when prompted to you and click OK.❹ Once done with the connection, you can access all the shared files and folders inside the shared one.Following the above steps, I can access the new_samba folder inside the Samba share.

Map Network Drive is another way of accessing Samba share. Follow the steps to exercise it:

Steps to Follow >

➊ Go to file explorer and click on Map network drive under the Computer tab like the following image:❷ Now, choose a Drive, enter the path for the Samba share and click Finish.From the image, you can see that I have chosen drive B: for my desired Samba share.

❸ If there prompts the credential requirements, then provide your user name and Samba password.After this, you can see that the Samba shared folder has been mapped to the selected drive.❹ Now, double click on the new drive and you can access the files and folders inside the Samba share.From the snapshot above, you can see that I can access my new_samba folder inside sambashare.

Read More: Install, Configure and Connect Samba on Ubuntu Using GUI

Below I will demonstrate two different cases of ‘Command line shell’ for accessing Samba share from Windows.

To access the Samba shares’ contents from the command prompt follow the steps below:

Steps to Follow >

➊ Press WIN+R, type cmd and hit ENTER. You will prompt to the command line interface.

❷ Now, write the following command in the command prompt to connect to the Samba share:

net use P: \\192.168.231.128\sambashare /user:nadiba 1234

If the given credentials are correct, you will see ‘The command completed successfully.’ like the above image.

❸ You will find then that the Samba share has been mapped to the assigned drive letter like the following image:Thus, you can access the samba shares’ contents.

You can also access Samba shares from PowerShell by following the given steps:

Steps to Follow >

➊ First, open PowerShell and write the following command to create a new drive:

New-PSDrive -Name A -PSProvider FileSystem -Root \\192.168.231.128\sambashare -Credential (Get-Credential)

❷ Now, you will prompt to a new window to provide the Samba username and password. Provide the requirements and click OK.You can see in the following screenshot that the Samba share has been mapped to the specific drive you chose.❸ Now, you can navigate to the drive whenever you want by running the command below:

cd A:

After navigating to the new Samba drive you can interact with the contents in the Samba share.

Read More: How to Install, Configure and Connect Samba Client on Ubuntu

Comparative Analysis of Methods

While accessing Samba share from Windows, you have two options- using GUI or command line shell. Let’s make a comparative analysis between these two methods.

Overall, both methods are preferable with their individual specifications. Which method to choose totally depends on the user’s preference, experience level and individual perspective.

Complementary Information

Besides the previous discussion regarding access to Samba share, the below information might interest you.

How to Open PowerShell

There are several ways to open PowerShell in Windows. I have mentioned three easy processes below:

1. Open PowerShell Using File Explorer

Press WIN+E and type powershell in the address bar and tap ENTER.

2. Open PowerShell Using Run Dialog

Press WIN+R, write powershell and click OK.

Click on the Start menu at the bottom-left of the screen, scroll and expand the Windows PowerShell folder and then click on ‘Windows PowerShell’ option.All of these three processes will open the PowerShell application in your Windows like the above image.

How to Perform Several Tasks on Samba Drive Using PowerShell

Using PowerShell you can view the listed contents, add new items or remove the whole Samba drive. Follow the detailed execution mentioned below:

List Contents

After navigating to the assigned Samba drive, you can list all the contents inside the Samba share using the command below:

Get-ChildItem

You can see from the image that I have navigated to drive A and can see the new_samba folder inside sambashare folder.

Create New Items

To create new files in a mounted Samba drive use the command below:

New-Item -ItemType File -Path A:\new_samba\samba.txt

You can see a new file ‘samba.txt’ has been added to the new_samba folder inside Samba drive.

Remove Drive Mapping

Once done accessing Samba share, you can remove the mapped Samba drive using the following command:

Remove-PSDrive -Name A

Also, you can check if the drive has successfully been removed or not by running the syntax below:

Get-PSDrive -Name A

From the above image, it is clear that the drive ‘A’ is removed successfully.

Conclusion

Samba share integrates collaboration in mixed operating systems. So, to confirm seamless access to Samba share from Windows you must configure the Samba server and set permissions properly. Also, ensure that Windows and Linux machines are on the same network.

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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.

# yum install samba-client samba-common  -y

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.

# smbclient -U user -L 192.168.1.122

Enter SAMBA\user's password:

        Sharename       Type      Comment
        ---------       ----      -------
        print$          Disk      Printer Drivers
        myshare         Disk      my share
        IPC$            IPC       IPC Service (Samba 4.9.1)
        user      Disk      Home Directories

Reconnecting with SMB1 for workgroup listing.

        Server               Comment
        ---------            -------

        Workgroup            Master
        ---------            -------
        SAMBA                SAMBA-SERVER

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.

# mkdir /mnt/myshare

Now, mount the share.

# mount -t cifs -o username=user //192.168.1.122/myshare /mnt/share

Password for user@//192.168.1.122/myshare:  ********

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

# df -h

Persistent mount

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.

# vim /etc/fstab

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

//192.168.1.122/myshare /mnt/share cifs username=user,password=password,_netdev 0  0

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.

//192.168.1.122/myshare /mnt/share cifs credentials=/home/user/.cred,_netdev 0 0

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.

# vim /home/user/.cred

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

username=user
password=password

Finally, mount all filesystems.

# mount -a

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:

PS > $password = Read-Host -AsSecureString
PS > New-LocalUser -Name “user” -Password $password

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:

PS > NET USE M: \\centos\myshare

Wrap up

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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Follow through this tutorial to learn how to access Samba share on Linux and Windows systems. In our previous guide, we learnt how to install and configure standalone Samba server Share on Ubuntu 20.04.

Easily Install and Configure Samba File Server on Ubuntu 20.04

First off, verify that you can access the share locally from the Samba share server itself.

Verify access to the public share;

smbclient '\\192.168.59.14\publicshare'

When prompted for password, just press ENTER.

Enter WORKGROUP\root's password: 
Anonymous login successful
Try "help" to get a list of possible commands.
smb: \> ls
  .                                   D        0  Tue Jun  8 17:50:10 2021
  ..                                  D        0  Mon Jun  7 19:09:46 2021
  demofolder-pub                      D        0  Tue Jun  8 17:47:46 2021
  demofile-pub                        N        0  Tue Jun  8 17:50:10 2021

		24697168 blocks of size 1024. 15255920 blocks available
smb: \>

Verify access to the Private share;

smbclient '\\192.168.59.14\privateshare' -U demouser

When prompted for password, enter the user’s smb password created above;

Enter WORKGROUP\demouser's password: 
Try "help" to get a list of possible commands.
smb: \> ls
  .                                   D        0  Tue Jun  8 17:50:10 2021
  ..                                  D        0  Mon Jun  7 19:09:46 2021
  demofile1                           N        0  Tue Jun  8 17:44:32 2021
  demofolder-priv                     D        0  Tue Jun  8 17:47:39 2021
  demofile-priv                       N        0  Tue Jun  8 17:50:10 2021

		24697168 blocks of size 1024. 15255920 blocks available
smb: \>

Accessing Samba Share from Windows System

Login to Windows, we are using Windows 7, in this example and right on click Computer (This PC on others) > Map Network drive.

Enter the Shared folder path;

Enter the credentials.

Access the share

Accessing Samba Share on from Linux systems:

To access the share from the Linux systems, you need to install the Samba client utilities.

On Ubuntu;

sudo apt install smbclient cifs-utils

Listing available samba shares:

smbclient -L 192.168.59.14 -U demouser

Enter SAMBA\demouser's password: 

	Sharename       Type      Comment
	---------       ----      -------
	print$          Disk      Printer Drivers
	publicshare     Disk      
	privateshare    Disk      
	IPC$            IPC       IPC Service (ubuntu20 server (Samba, Ubuntu))
SMB1 disabled -- no workgroup available

Access the share;

smbclient '\\192.168.59.14\privateshare' -U demouser

Enter WORKGROUP\demouser's password: 
Try "help" to get a list of possible commands.
smb: \> ls
  .                                   D        0  Tue Jun  8 22:00:04 2021
  ..                                  D        0  Mon Jun  7 22:09:46 2021
  Windows Folder                      D        0  Tue Jun  8 21:59:54 2021
  demofile1                           N        0  Tue Jun  8 20:44:32 2021
  demofolder-priv                     D        0  Tue Jun  8 20:47:39 2021
  demofile-priv                       N        0  Tue Jun  8 20:50:10 2021

		24697168 blocks of size 1024. 15253132 blocks available
smb: \>

You can also mount the share. For example, to mount the public share;

mount -t cifs -o vers=3.0,username=demouser '\192.168.59.14\privateshare' /mnt

Enter the password.

Verify mount points:

df -hT -P /mnt/

Filesystem                   Type  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
\\192.168.59.14\privateshare cifs   24G  9.2G   15G  39% /mnt

ls -1 /mnt/

demofile1
demofile-priv
demofolder-priv
'Windows Folder'

On CentOS and Similar derivatives:

yum install samba-client samba-common cifs-utils -y

Access a share;

smbclient '\\192.168.59.14\publicshare'

Enter SAMBA\root's password: 
Anonymous login successful
Try "help" to get a list of possible commands.
smb: \> ls
  .                                   D        0  Tue Jun  8 20:50:10 2021
  ..                                  D        0  Mon Jun  7 22:09:46 2021
  demofolder-pub                      D        0  Tue Jun  8 20:47:46 2021
  demofile-pub                        N        0  Tue Jun  8 20:50:10 2021

		24697168 blocks of size 1024. 15135168 blocks available
smb: \>

Mounting the Shares;

mount -t cifs -o username=demouser //192.168.59.14/publicshare /media/

mount -t cifs -o username=demouser //192.168.59.14/privateshare /mnt/

Use the demouser password when prompted.

df -hT -P /media/ /mnt/

Filesystem                   Type  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
//192.168.59.14/publicshare  cifs   24G  9.2G   15G  39% /media
//192.168.59.14/privateshare cifs   24G  9.2G   15G  39% /mnt

AutoMount Samba Shares on Reboot

If you want the share to be automatically available during a system reboot, you can:

• simply click Reconnect on Logon while mapping network drive on Windows
• update the Filesystem table on Linux as shown below

Update the /etc/ftab with an entry such as

vim /etc/fstab

//192.168.59.14/privateshare /mnt cifs username=demouser,password=password,_netdev 0  0

Be sure to replace the username and password.

If you dont want to use the credentials on the entry, you can use a credentials file:

vim /etc/.smb

username=demouser
password=password

Next, update the fstab entry such that it look like;

//192.168.59.14/privateshare /mnt cifs credentials=/etc/.smb,_netdev 0  0

Next, check the mounting by running;

mount -a

df -hT -P /mnt/

Filesystem                   Type  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
//192.168.59.14/privateshare cifs   24G  9.7G   14G  41% /mnt

And there you go. You should now be able to auto-mount the Samba share on boot and be able to access your shared folders.

That marks the end of our tutorial on how to access Samba Share on Linux and Windows Systems.

Other Tutorials

Setup Software RAID on Ubuntu 20.04

Setup GlusterFS Distributed Replicated Volume on CentOS 8

Install ownCloud Desktop Client on Ubuntu 20.04

If you work with different operating systems, it’s handy to be able to share files between them. This article explains how to set up file access between Linux (Fedora 33) and Windows 10 using Samba and mount.cifs.

Samba is the Linux implementation of the SMB/CIFS protocol, allowing direct access to shared folders and printers over a network. Mount.cifs is part of the Samba suite and allows you to mount the CIFS filesystem under Linux.

Caution: These instructions are for sharing files within your private local network or in a virtualized host-only network between a Linux host machine and a virtualized Windows guest. Don’t consider this article a guideline for your corporate network, as it doesn’t implement the necessary cybersecurity considerations.

Access Linux from Windows

This section explains how to access a user’s Linux home directory from Windows File Explorer.

1. Install and configure Samba

Start on your Linux system by installing Samba:

dnf install samba

Samba is a system daemon, and its configuration file is located in /etc/samba/smb.conf. Its default configuration should work. If not, this minimal configuration should do the job:

[global]
        workgroup = SAMBA
        server string = %h server (Samba %v)
        invalid users = root
        security = user
[homes]
        comment = Home Directories
        browseable = no
        valid users = %S
        writable = yes

You can find a detailed description of the parameters in the smb.conf section of the project’s website.

2. Modify LinuxSE

If your Linux distribution is protected by SELinux (as Fedora is), you have to enable Samba to be able to access the user’s home directory:

setsebool -P samba_enable_home_dirs on

Check that the value is set by typing:

getsebool samba_enable_home_dirs

Your output should look like this:

3. Enable your user

Samba uses a set of users and passwords that have permission to connect. Add your Linux user to the set by typing:

smbpasswd -a <your-user>

You will be prompted for a password. This is a completely new password; it is not the current password for your account. Enter the password you want to use to log in to Samba.

To get a list of allowed user types:

pdbedit -L -v

Remove a user by typing:

smbpasswd -x <user-name>

4. Start Samba

Because Samba is a system daemon, you can start it on Fedora with:

systemctl start smb

This starts Samba for the current session. If you want Samba to start automatically on system startup, enter:

systemctl enable smb

On some systems, the Samba daemon is registered as smbd.

4. Configure the firewall

By default, Samba is blocked by your firewall. Allow Samba to access the network permanently by configuring the firewall.

You can do it on the command line with:

firewall-cmd --add-service=samba --permanent

Or you do it graphically with the firewall-config tool:

5. Access Samba from Windows

In Windows, open File Explorer. On the address line, type in two backslashes followed by your Linux machine’s address (IP address or hostname):

You will be prompted for your login information. Type in the username and password combination from step 3. You should now be able to access your home directory on your Linux machine:

Access Windows from Linux

The following steps explain how to access a shared Windows folder from Linux. To implement them, you need Administrator rights on your Windows user account.

1. Enable file sharing

Open the Network and Sharing Center either by clicking on the

Windows Button > Settings > Network & Internet

or by right-clicking the little monitor icon on the bottom-right of your taskbar:

In the window that opens, find the connection you want to use and note its profile. I used Ethernet 3, which is tagged as a Public network.

Caution: Consider changing your local machine’s connection profile to Private if your PC is frequently connected to public networks.

Remember your network profile and click on Change advanced sharing settings:

Select the profile that corresponds to your connection and turn on network discovery and file and printer sharing:

2. Define a shared folder

Open the context menu by right-clicking on the folder you want to share, navigate to Give access to, and select Specific people… :

Check whether your current username is on the list. Click on Share to tag this folder as shared:

You can display a list of all shared folders by entering \\localhost in File Explorer’s address line:

Image by:

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3. Mount the shared folder under Linux

Go back to your Linux system, open a command shell, and create a new folder where you want to mount the Windows share:

mkdir ~/WindowsShare

Mounting Windows shares is done with mount.cifs, which should be installed by default. To mount your shared folder temporarily, use:

sudo mount.cifs //<address-of-windows-pc>/MySharedFolder ~/WindowsShare/ -o user=<Windows-user>,uid=$UID

In this command:

• <address-of-windows-pc> is the Windows PC’s address info (IP or hostname)
• <Windows-user>is the user that is allowed to access the shared folder (from step 2)

You will be prompted for your Windows password. Enter it, and you will be able to access the shared folder on Windows with your normal Linux user.

To unmount the shared folder:

sudo umount ~/WindowsShare/

You can also mount a Windows shared folder on system startup. Follow these steps to configure your system accordingly.

Summary

This shows how to establish temporary shared folder access that must be renewed after each boot. It is relatively easy to modify this configuration for permanent access. I often switch back and forth between different systems, so I consider it incredibly practical to set up direct file access.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.