How to access shared locations on a windows machine from a linux machine via terminal?

Question

I’ve setup a Virtual CentOS machine and set up a bridged network and static IP so that it can communicate with other Windows machines in the network.

Currently, to access any shared directory, I navigate using the GUI. These are the steps I follow:

1. Click on Places > and click on Network Servers. This opens the Nautilus Manager to show network servers. (screenshot below)
2. Then I double click on windows network. This shows me all the available domains in the network.
3. I double click the required domain which chows me all the machines under that domain.
4. I double click the machine which prompts for authentication. (screenshot below screenshot =))
5. After filling up the required details, clicking connect shows me all the shared folders in that machine.

Now I’d like to access this shared location from terminal; so that I can use ‘cd’ command or something like that (maybe 'ls') to navigate through the folders or see the files in the windows share directory. How do I do this?

Answer 1

If you want to do that, you have to mount the desired share to a local directory. For example, if your shared folder is \\10.10.1.1\My-Shared-Folder, then execute

mount -t smbfs -o username=name,password=password //10.10.1.1/My-Shared-Folder /mnt/smbshare

And remember, you have to first create the directory where the share will be mounted (in the example above, /mnt/share).

Answer 2

Open your file browser, enter the IP or network name of the drive, enter the credentials and you have it in your file browser to edit and read.... why would you want to access in the terminal...... - the mount works above but having a network folder open on login also works in your file browser and is more accessable.