Windows Data

Access SMB shares from Linux#

It’s possible to access Windows network shares via SMB protocol.

  • Note: H: and M: drives became obsolete since 2022 and not available anymore. The only research volumes are accessible.

Check if you have GVFS and CIFS (samba) installed and install if necessary:

 sudo apt install gvfs gvfs-backends cifs-utils

From GUI file manager#

Almost any modern desktop environment in Linux has SMB support Start file manager (Dolphin, Thunar, Nautilus) and navigate to:

smb://vuwstocoissrin1.vuw.ac.nz/<research_volume_name>

  • domain name: staff
  • login: your_windows_login
  • password: Your Staff (Windows) password
  • Remember Password

From command line as ordinary user#

gio mount smb://USERNAME@vuwstocoissrin1.vuw.ac.nz/<research_volume_name>

where USERNAME is your STAFF login

Volume will become available as /run/user/NUMBER/gvfs/smb-share/\:server\=vuwstocoissrin1.....

(where NUMBER is your local user ID)

With mount (user must be in sudo group)# 

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/smb/research

sudo mount -t cifs -o domain=staff,username=your_windows_login \
//vuwstocoissrin1.vuw.ac.nz/RESEARCH_VOLUME_NAME/ \
/mnt/smb/research