OK, we live in the wonderful world of Linux. BUT, for many of us, having to deal with Windows is a fact of life. For example, you may want to use a Linux server to back up Windows files. This can be made easy by mounting Windows shares on the server. You will be accessing Windows files as if they are local and essentially all Linux commands can be used. Mounting Windows (or other samba) shares is done through the cifs virtual file system client (cifs vfs) implemented in kernel and a mount helper mount.cifs which is part of the samba suite.
The following names are used in our examples.
remote Windows machine windowspc
share name on windowspc: data
username: tomsmith
password: blogs
password: Create a local mount point. For example:
mkdir /mnt/win
Edit the /etc/fstab file and add a line like:
//windowspc/data /mnt/win cifs user,uid=500,rw,suid,username=tomsmith,password=blogs 0 0
The Windows share gets mounted on boot. Add the noauto option if you wish to manually mount it by the command mount /mnt/win . In this example, local user (uid=500) will become the owner of the mounted files. Use of the uid flag is optional. However, it may be required for certain applications (for example, Acrobat) to work because they are picky about the permissions.
