Mapping to Network Drives and shared server space
 

Something that is a cinch on Windows is making me grit my teeth on Linux... mapping to a network drive. I've seen a hundred different recipes and I don't know which ones are right or wrong, but I've tried them all to no avail.

Here is my server information.


Here is a recipe that I have been trying to follow.


Could someone explain to me what exactly is what and what goes where?



I just installed the latest release of Ubuntu today, and I haven't used much linux before. Are there better versions of linux? Can anyone tout Suse Linux for me? Are there advantages to using linux (besides being free and open-source)? A German friend of mine is trying to convince me to switch to linux, which is apparently the thing to do for university science students in Germany.

I have never tried to do it with campus servers, only with my own server at home and it didnt have different usernames, just a single share, and i used smbmount. And i was going to suggest this, but it looks like your guide says this already, so what is going wrong with the guide? any errors?

Well, I don't know what the "lingo" means or where I should put my information.

Keep it simple. If you know the longname of the Windoze host and the name of the "share", then fill in as many of these as you know:

Places > Connect to server > Windows Share
+Windoze server name (IP might be okay)
+Share name (like "cass1")
+Folder (like "deptdir")
+Login user name (your user name?)
+Windoze Domain Name (Do you know the domain name?)

Then check the "Add Bookmark" box and give your connection a name, so that you don't lose your settings.

Click "Connect"

We don't start "religious" discussions around here ;-)

Reliability, security, peace of mind. You are never going back to Windoze once you feel comfortable with a Linux desktop. It doesn't matter so much which variant you select. You get the advantages of Linux with any major distribution. I think that much of the discussion you will hear will tout the personal favorite distro of the poster. I started with RedHat, switched to Debian, used Suse, and now I'm running several Ubuntu boxes just because they are easily configured. Nothing is sacred :-)

what do I type? I've never done this before. I don't see the advantage of a command line compared to a program.

I type in "smbmount" in the command line and it gives me a list of options and the form of the prompt:

"Usage: /sbin/mount.cifs <remotetarget> <dir> -o <options>"



Why is there "/sbin/mount.cifs" in front when the link from before only begins with "smbmount"?

The link from above says "/path/to/mount" as well. Do I type exactly this in or is this different?

Gah! Maybe I'll just ask the retards who work at the help desk. I don't know what the "directory" should be or the "remote target" and I can't find a generic example.



Also, I don't know why, but my wireless internet connection keeps turning off and on even though the signal is strong.

Right here goes,

smbmount //sgs1/username$ /where/you/want (a folder that you want the files to appear in) -o username=(put in your username), workgroup=(put in the workgroup that your campus share is on), uid=(you campus username), ip=(the network address of the server, its hostname may work im not sure)

Then hopefully it should ask you for your network password. I hope this works, i just followed the guide you posted earlier. If your IT helpdesk can so this for you, i would go there first. They will probably know how to do the specifics for your network.


Using the command line is so much more powerful than using a GUI, once you know what exactly you are doing, the command line can be so much fast. It may just take some time before you get used to using it for specific things. I would be very surprised though if there was not a front end somewhere for mapping network drives. It seems like a reasonable and common enough problem that someone would have written something.

Let us know how you get on, or what the IT staff do to get it working, so we or you can tell others with the same issue.

Thanks

Ryan

EDIT:i changed the \\ to // in the server. i got mixed up, smbfs needs // in the share name i beleive

Ryan is correct in saying that the smbmount command is very efficient.


Ryan, I'm using Ubuntu with gnome; peek at this:

...which puts your mount in $home/.gvfs path.

Cheers!

OP, there you go, hopefully that can make things a bit easier for you ^^ WFH's post should make things clearer for you, at least easier. And as far as im aware, Ubuntu comes with nautilus as its default file manager, and im sure you could point it to mount where ever you wanted :D. shame its nautilus only, konqueror FTW. kidding... :P shouldn't play with matches and an open light. But again im sure there is a kde specific help programme, or just a generic app for it.

Hope you manage to connect to your campus files! Or i guess to be really old-skool you could just use a usb pen drive, or i email all my files to myself on gmail, a bit less convienient but they are then with me everywhere

Ryan