Transfer files between Windows and Linux machines?

Question

My problem is that I need to backup the files on my Linux machine to my Windows laptop. My external hard drive died, and so backing up to an external drive is out of the question for the time being.

These are the methods I've tried:

• Samba
• Samba with Gadwin GUI
• Windows Shared Folder, Wirelessly (I can't access it, even though both machines indicate a connection)

I don't want to try Samba again, because it's just too complex for me -- the 15-odd tutorials I used were either incomplete or assumed too much knowledge on the part of the reader. I've spent about 8 hours trying to make it work and I give up.

I've heard that you can connect two computers with an ethernet cable. Only problem is that it's not a cross-over cable, and I don't have a router, so they would have to be directly connected with a regular rj-45 cable.

I don't want to upload files to the cloud, because I have a lot of files to transfer and want it to be speedy.

Answer 1

Please do not get discouraged by the overwhelming amount of information in setting up of samba. It's pretty simple as discussed here.

If you do not believe, these are the steps I did in my machine and it took me just couple of minutes to access the mount point of my RHEL machine on the Windows machine. I assume the RHEL and Windows machine are available in the same network.

Let us go one baby step at a time and it would make your experience smoother.

Step 1: Installation

yum install samba

Now, we will configure the firewall to open up some ports for samba.

Step 2: Firewall Configuration

To achieve this, run the Firewall Configuration tool by selecting the System -> Administration -> Firewall menu option.

Step 3: Edit the configuration file

Edit /etc/samba/smb.conf file to make some changes. The only change I made was, to add the below information to the end of the file.

[tmp]
        path = /tmp
        writeable = yes
        browseable = yes
        valid users = demo

As we can see, I am sharing the /tmp share and allowing the user demo to access the share from the windows machine.

Step 4: Add the user

In your Linux machine, add the local user by running adduser demo and then run the command smbpasswd -a demo and set a password.

Step 5: Start the required services

This is the final step and we are done.

service smb start
service nmb start

Now, login to the windows machine and from Networks tab you could see that your Linux share is available for you.

EDIT

As you had mentioned you use Mint for Linux, your steps could be something as below. The configuration file for smb.conf is the same as RHEL machines and the online tutorial could be accessed from here.

sudo apt-get install samba
sudo restart smbd
sudo testparm

Answer 2

NitroShare may be able to do what you're looking for. It is a small app that allows files to quickly be sent between machines on the same network.

Once installed on both your Linux and Windows machines, the two machines should automatically discover each other. Use the menu in the system tray to send a file or directory to a specific machine on the network:

Download links are available here.

Answer 3

How do you connect to the internet? Wireless? That's slower than cable but should work if you can get an IP for both PCs.

From experience, WinSCP gives the least problems transfering files and dealing with reconnects, etc. (on Windows)

Your Linux machine probably already has ssh activated, so on Windows you only download WinSCP, enter the IP, username, password and you are ready to go.

Answer 4

Cross-over Ethernet cables are largely obsolete as pretty much every NIC and switch supports Auto MDI-X these days. You can use a regular straight-through Ethernet cable and the NICs will just "figure it out" on their own.

If you are connecting PCs directly (without a router or other DHCP server), you'll need to set static IP addresses on both systems. For example, 192.168.1.40/24 and 192.168.1.41/24.

After you can ping the Linux box from the Windows box, then you can use SSH or Samba or whatever you want to actually push the files. I specifiy pinging in this direction because Windows firewall is braindead and defaults to blocking ICMP echo requests (pings).