Mounting Windows Share to Linux Server

Hi Folks -

I need to mount a Windows Share to a Linux server. What is the best/easiest way to do this?

Is this 'how-to' guide accurate:

How to Share Files Between Windows and Linux

Or is there a better method you could share?

Thanks!

It looks reasonably accurate. Mounting a share without a password isn't the greatest idea though. You may want to tailor it a bit more to your own needs; rather than giving access to everyone (dangerous for obvious reasons), open the share as your user and give it a password. -o user=linuxuser,username=winuser,password=pass

See man mount.cifs for more options you can put in -o to control permissions and the like.

Depending on your distro, cifs-utils may be the wrong package, or unnecessary - CIFS share mounting is a device driver, part of the Linux kernel, and might just be there already. If you don't have mount.cifs, try mount -t cifs.

Hosting a CIFS share on Linux is a totally different story, that requires the Samba package.

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Thank you!

What's the difference between Hosting and Mounting?

Mounting: Share is on Windows, Linux attaches to it.

Hosting: Share is on Linux, Windows or other attaches to it.

Ah i see!

Yes, the share is on Windows and I'm merely just trying to access it from Linux. Therefore, mounting would the path forward, correct?

Correct.

As M$-windows and *nix don't have any intersection of protocols in common, you need to deploy "crutches" to make them talk to each other. On the MS side, there is smb (�Server Message Block�), their file sharing protocol (CIFS is a dialect of SMB). Deploy the "samba" suite on *nix to make use of it. On the *nix side, there is the nfs (�Networked File System�) protocol; there are MS windows NFS drivers that enable you to use it.

Actually, linux has native CIFS support now, for mounting anyway. CIFS is the slightly-more-open protocol that SMB evolved into.

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Thanks for the replies, guys! I figured it out. Much appreciated!

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