How to access Windows box via Samba?

[Bryan J. Smith]

John Aldrich wrote:
> IS there any way to access the Windows machine via
> Samba? I'd really like to be able to grab files off
> my windows machine from remote at times... I know
> this will be partly handled by what's shared on my
> Windows machine... What else do I need to do?

SMBCLIENT

All Samba-capable systems have an FTP-like interface via
"smbclient."  smbclient can also do a few tricks like tar and other
functions.

SMBFS

Linux clients have an additional capabilities via its smbfs layer in
its VFS.  So Linux can mount SMB shares locally.  Understand that
you _will_ run into 2 issues with doing this:  1) Case INsensitivity
on the Windows side and 2) Unicode/codepage issues.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

I had a Linux cluster where the vendor refused to put a Linux
workstation as the "front end" with the main storage.  As such, my
Linux systems had to mount the NT box.  It was disasterous from the
client standpoint and the program (although not well written) core
dumped all over the place (due to both case INsensitivity and code
page issues).  The "temporary fix" was to install Microsoft Services
For UNIX (SFU, $149) which includes Intergraph's AccessNFS (fka
PC-NFS from Sun) server/client.  From there we were mounting the NT
box via NFS -- but NT/AccessNFS sucks so bad, just adding a user
would nearly require a reboot (and the user-group mappings were far
from perfect).

So if you are just copy files, smbclient/smbfs is probably just
fine.  If you expect to be able to run production apps for SMB
mounts, forget it.  UNIX servers are ultraflexible in their
capabilities to serve any platform, the same is NOT true of NT
servers.

-- TheBS

-- 
Bryan "TheBS" Smith         chat:thebs413 @AOL/MSN/Yahoo
Engineer                       mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org
********************************************************
"Linux will do for applications what the Internet did to
 networks" -- Sam Palmisano, IBM Chief Operating Officer