Samba Client for MintNet

While swimming In the vast ocean of Windows, it is nice to be able to connect and talk to Windows in a language that is native to it. The SMB / CIFS protocol is native to Windows. The SMB Client enables Mint to talk to Windows. Following procedures provides a quick hint on setting up the SMB Client on MintNet, and tested on a WinXP professional OS.

Note on Windows 7 compatibility : These procedures here works for Windows XP but does not work for Windows 7, as Windows 7 breaks Samba 3.4.x and below. See this thread for more information.

1. Installation of the SMB Client

The SMB client is packaged into the following RPM. It needs the SMB Common package to complete the installation. It is assumed that Mintnet and unix styled environment is installed.

• 1. Make sure that your network is up and running.

  2. Down the 2 packages: samba-common-3.0.1-1.m68kmint.rpm and samba-client-3.0.1-1.m68kmint.rpm or the newer versions.

  3. Install using RPM samba-common-3.0.1-1.m68kmint.rpm followed by samba-client-3.0.1-1.m68kmint.rpm.

2. Configuration

• 1. Enter the windows server name into the /etc/samba/lmhosts file. This is so that you can use the hostname rather than IP address when connecting to the server.

  2. In the SMB.CONF file, uncomment the line interfaces and enter your Atari ip address. Remove any other ip address on that line.

3. Excuting SMB Client

• 1. Open a command line shell, e.g. tcsh

  2. To test the SMB client, type in smbclient -L windows_server -U windows_account

Replace windows_server with the Windows computer name, and windows_account with an account that works on that Window server. This command will list out all the resources that are available from that windows computer. You will be asked to enter the password of the windows_account.

Once you located the share name on the server via the -L option, you can then connect to the share using this command:

smbclient \\\\windows_server\\sharename -U windows_account

This will put you into a mode similar to FTP whereby you can LS, PUT or GET a file from the windows server. Note the extra "\" on the line.

Some gotchas here include: Firewall which must be configured to allow your Atari to talk to the Windows. The shared folder must be configured on the Windows PC via the sharing properties. Normally read access is default on Windows, so you will probably able to read the files on the resource. Of course the windows_account must have read access on the folder being shared.