Hello,

I'm trying to use Samba to allow my windows machine to "map a network drive" from my REMOTE linux machine.

I'm not having any success. I've had success before wit Samba on a local network.

Thus my question is does Samba only work on local networks?

Do I have to setup a VPN first then setup samba?

Thanks in advance.

oops, wrong thread...

That depends how "remote" your other machine is. The samba ports (137...139) are not considered very secure and no netop in his right mind would let that through. The ports usually get blocked in the firewalls along the way. In addition, it would be really, really slow.

Now if you have ssh access from your windows to the remote machine, it's best and more efficient to tunnel the connections.

Here's how ( replace remote-mchine with the name of you actual one)

That tunnels all 3 ports in question. You must do this as root on a Linux box, but I believe your windows machine lets you do this anyway.

Then if //remote-host/share is the sharename, substitute //localhost/sharename

[ map network drive -> then type it ]. On Linux I just tried that and typed

Works fine.

If you wonder where you type the ssh command on windows, download and install cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com ). At the installation config, add the ssh stuff.

Hope it helps,

mlp

First thanks for your reply. Sorry if these questions are too newbie'ish

When you typed: mount -t smbfs //localhost/share /mountpoint

Your mounting FROM a windows share. I want to MAP from a linux share.

Also...just to verify I understand this...this still uses Samba, but it uses SSH for security right? Will I have to enter that SSH command on every windows boot? Or will it save it?

Thanks again.

Hi VirtueTech,

no, what I called //localhost/share or //remote-host/share is the "share" on the Linux box. I understood from your post that the share you want to mount is hosted on Linux, such as your home diretory there or something. That's how a share looks in both windows and Linux. In this example, I mapped, in your nomenclature, from a Linux share (I changed the names for obscurity, but it was actually my unix home directory at work).

ssh has many applications, one of them being a secure, encrypted, autheticated telnet replacement. Its other function is to provide a tunnel for other protocols to "tunnel through", either for added security or because the protocol in question (such as Samba) is normally blocked.

So when I write (I leave the other ports out for clarity,same thing)

ssh -L 139:remote-machine:139 yourname@remote-machine

that opens a tunnel for port 139. The port 139 on your machine (localhost) is really the entrance to the tunnel that ends at port 139 at remote-machine, just as if you had gone to port 139 on the remote-machine directly, except that port isn't accessible directly. So all traffic of that protocol travels through the tunnel.

Yes, you have to repeat the command each time you boot and also each time the ssh session terminates, but then you put that in a script and it's no hassle at all.

Good luck,
mlp