Most of the files that students use on the Truman network are stored on Windows shares, sometimes called SMB shares or Samba shares. SMB is the name of the protocol used to transfer files to and from these shares, and Samba is the name of the program for Linux that speaks the SMB protocol.
Using Samba, Linux machines can create shares that can be read by the Windows machines on the network. More important for most users, however, is that Samba is the program that allows access to the Truman U: and Y: drives.
To use the Samba shares, it is necessary to know their ``real'' name. The drive letter assignments we generally refer to are just arbitrary names, but the real name specifies where on the network the data is stored. Under Windows, you can learn these names in My Computer. For example, the U: drive is described as Student_files on 'hydrogen'. This tells you the real name of the U: drive in Windows terms is \\hydrogen\Student_files. In a unix environment, we would normally reverse the slashes. The available shares currently at Truman are:
The S: drive: //Ss1/Win_apps
The T: drive: //xenon/user
The U: drive: //hydrogen/Student_files
The Y: drive: //hydrogen/user
The easiest way to access one of these shares is using the smbclient program. It takes the name of a share, followed by
various switches. The most important switches are -U to specify the username for connecting to the share and
-W to specify the workgroup (domain).
Example 7-1. Connecting to the U: drive with smbclient
$ smbclient //hydrogen/Student_Files -U dbindner -W truman added interface ip=150.243.160.42 bcast=150.243.191.255 nmask=255.255.224.0 Password: Domain=[TRUMAN] OS=[Windows 5.0] Server=[Windows 2000 LAN Manager] smb: \>
Once connected, smbclient accepts various commands. Among them are:
Table 7-1. smbclient commands
| help | lists the commands understood by the program |
| help command | prints help for a specific command |
| cd | change the remote directory |
| dir (or ls) | list the contents of the remote directory |
| get remotefile | get a file from the remote machine |
| put localfile | put a file onto the remote machine |
| mget or mput | get or put multiple files at a time |
You can use these commands to navigate the system and transfer files:
Example 7-2. Navigating in smbclient
smb: \> dir
. DR 0 Fri Aug 30 15:08:00 2002
.. DR 0 Fri Aug 30 15:08:00 2002
_BU Student File Area D 0 Mon Mar 17 17:26:41 2003
_ED Student File Area D 0 Wed Feb 26 07:42:55 2003
_FN Student File Area D 0 Tue Dec 10 13:12:32 2002
_HES Student File Area D 0 Wed Feb 5 16:28:11 2003
_ITS Student File Area D 0 Fri Feb 28 14:20:15 2003
_LL Student File Area D 0 Tue Dec 3 17:08:22 2002
_MT Student File Area D 0 Mon Feb 3 18:39:54 2003
_NU Student File Area D 0 Fri Feb 21 11:53:03 2003
_PL Student File Area D 0 Wed Mar 19 18:17:48 2003
_SC Student File Area D 0 Fri Mar 21 16:42:10 2003
_SS Student File Area D 0 Mon Nov 11 15:39:28 2002
_UB Student File Area D 0 Tue Dec 17 09:51:32 2002
19200 blocks of size 4096. 19200 blocks available
smb: \> cd "_MT Student File Area"
smb: \_MT Student File Area\> cd dbindner
smb: \_MT Student File Area\dbindner\> dir
. D 0 Tue Apr 9 14:05:05 2002
.. D 0 Tue Apr 9 14:05:05 2002
brian D 0 Tue May 1 05:45:30 2001
CalcIII D 0 Tue May 1 05:45:30 2001
cs120 D 0 Tue Apr 9 13:50:21 2002
gvim.lnk 509 Tue Apr 9 14:04:44 2002
Office2000 D 0 Tue Apr 9 13:49:38 2002
Sound D 0 Tue May 1 05:44:57 2001
vim D 0 Wed Oct 16 16:04:40 2002
19200 blocks of size 4096. 19200 blocks available
smb: \_MT Student File Area\dbindner\> get gvim.lnk
getting file gvim.lnk of size 509 as gvim.lnk (99.4 kb/s) (average 99.4 kb/s)
smb: \_MT Student File Area\dbindner\> quit
If you prefer to have Windows shares appear as regular parts of the unix filesystem, you can do that with the smbmount command. Smbmount has two required arguments: the name of a share, and a directory to attach it to. As with the regular mount command, this directory is often referred to as a mount point.
In addition to the required commands, it is customary to pass some
options to the smbmount command via the -o
switch. The most common options are username
which specifies your Windows account name, and workgroup which specifies your workgroup (sometimes this
is called your domain). The command will prompt for the password of this
account when it runs.
Note: Mounting and unmounting filesystems usually requires root privileges. On most systems, smbmount ``runs as root,'' but if it does not on yours, you will need to become root first (usually via the su command).
Example 7-3. Mounting a Windows share
$ mkdir u_drive $ smbmount //Ss1/Student_files u_drive -o username=dbindner,workgroup=TRUMAN Password: $
To unmount the share, simply use the smbumount command (note the spelling, just like the regular umount command).