"Permanently" mapping a drive in Vista Home to SAMBA Network Share Help

Brewmaster619 · 01-28-2011, 12:07 PM

OK, this is really little to do with Linux, as my question really involves my Vista Home machines.
Anyone know good methods to have Windows Vista (Home Edition) machines stay mapped to a SAMBA share on a Linux server? I'm using user-level security on the server (Ubuntu Server 10.10), and it (generally) works really well, but I can't get the rest of my family to use it, as (understandably), they don't want to have to type in their password to the share every time they log in to the Vista machines (or my one XP machine left, for that matter), plus the problems when it occasionally decides it's already tried to connect once and failed, and refuses to "restore" the connection, ugh.
I currently have one Win7 machine, and surprisingly, with the Win7 Home Premium edition, it actually "remembers" the passwords to the SAMBA shares.

Perhaps I could script it or something, I dunno.

petebow4 · 01-28-2011, 12:46 PM

You can script it.

See:

Code:

 C:\>net use /?
The syntax of this command is:


NET USE
[devicename | *] [\\computername\sharename[\volume] [password | *]]
        [/USER:[domainname\]username]
        [/USER:[dotted domain name\]username]
        [/USER:[username@dotted domain name]
        [/SMARTCARD]
        [/SAVECRED]
        [[/DELETE] | [/PERSISTENT:{YES | NO}]]

NET USE {devicename | *} [password | *] /HOME

NET USE [/PERSISTENT:{YES | NO}]

From there you should be able to write a batch script to auto mount the drives on startup. Just remember the password will be visible in plain text.

Why not allow everyone +rw access to the drives, and restrict which machines can access SAMBA?

Brewmaster619 · 01-29-2011, 10:56 AM

The suggestion about the access setup might be a good idea for the "shared" share that everyone can access. But each user also has their own personal share, and understandably, my kids will want to be able to keep at least some of their personal things at least out of the reach of their sibling, though of course my wife and I can still access them.
If scripting it is the only way, if I could use a WSH VBScript, I could at least encode it, which would keep them or other casual snooper from easily reading the passwords, at least until they get technically savvy enough to find a decoder for it.