Can macs see samba shares?

billymayday · 01-07-2007, 03:19 PM

A very quick question that I don't seem to be able to find a definitive answer to with google.

I'm looking to buy my daughter a new laptop, and she'd like an apple since that's what they use at school. I currently have a number of XP Pro machines hanging off a server with Samba set up to manage file storage.

Question - can a mac connect to a samba share in much the same way as my windows machines do? It would be pretty frustrating to go and buy a mac and find I need to change too much on the server side.

Rgds

stress_junkie · 01-07-2007, 03:20 PM

There is a Linux driver for AppleTalk networks. It is called atalk. I've never used it so I don't know how to configure it. That is definitely the place to start unless Macs have a Windows network driver. I don't use Macs so I don't know.

Emerson · 01-07-2007, 04:07 PM

Mac can connect to Samba shares. And over AppleTalk as mentioned above. However, being sort of *NIX more natural way for a Mac would be connecting using NFS. You can share same volume/directories currently shared with Samba also over NFS. This is not hard to set up. Actually I shared it this way until last Windows was gone. Then I simply removed Samba.

billymayday · 01-07-2007, 04:14 PM

Thanks, sounds like it should be safe enough to buy.

Rgds

Bill

chort · 01-07-2007, 05:52 PM

Mounting network shares is easy. Just select Finder, hit the COMMAND key (Apple key) + K, type in the share path like this: smb://host/share . It will prompt you for the necessary authentication information. If you want to save a share as a "favorite" you can save it like this: smb://user@host/share to avoid having to type the username every time, and you can save the password to your keychain.

billymayday · 01-07-2007, 08:25 PM

Thanks chort. I placed my order already!

Rgds