[Samba] Joining Domain? - Connecting to a Windows Share from Linux

[Rick Bilonick]

On Mon, 2006-12-18 at 01:05 -0500, Rick Bilonick wrote:
> I'm using FC4 and can see many Windows shares but cannot connect to any
> of them. Some of them ask for a username and password some don't and
> just say I can't connnect. The main share I need access to and have
> permission to connect to never asks for my username and password (on a
> Windows box I can access this share). I have used konqueror to see the
> shares. I don't get anywhere with smbclient -L. In order to connect to
> Windows shares, do I have to have my Linux box join the domain? I've
> used Samba a long time ago at a different institution but I haven't
> gotten very far at this institution. I've tried using lineighborhood,
> smb4k, etc. but it hasn't helped. smbd and nmbd are running. Why is it
> so difficult to deal with Windows shares?
> 
> Rick
> 
I sent this several weeks ago but no one responded. There doesn't seem
to be anyone interested in just accessing Windows shares on a Windows
network from Linux. After asking the IT people here a lot of questions,
I finally found out why I was not able to access the share I should have
been able to access even though I could browse the Windows network and
see a lot of servers.

First, they have prevented browsing to the departmental share I should
have access to. So even though I could see the server, I could not
browse down to the shares (it would also say it could not connect and
would never ask for a username and password). For some reason, IT had
not set the permissions so that I could mount the share (I had to give
them the computer's IP address), and finally, they had to set the
permissions for both read and write. Once they did these things, then I
only needed one more piece of information - the IP address or the DNS
host name that corresponds to the smb share naem. On FC6, the mount
command requires either the IP address or the DNS host name - it won't
work with the smb name (I only found this accidentally while searching
on the web). Also, FC6 does not have an smbmount command. To mount the
share I used (all one line):

> mount -t cifs -o
username=xxxx,password=xxxx //DNS-host-name/xxxxx /mnt/whatever

Note that "smbfs" will not work - you have to use "cifs".

I added this information to /etc/fstab to make it more permanent.

So in the end, you don't have to join the domain just to use shares.

Rick B.