I have a network hard drive that I want to access from my Linux system as well as some other computers that run Windows, but I have no idea how to go about doing this. The desktop environment Gnome has a "Browse Network" option, but it doesn't do anything at the moment. I've heard of NFS and Samba, but I'm having difficulties understanding how I'm supposed to configure them.
1 Answer
If the drive is already accessible from Windows, then it most likely uses SMB, not NFS. To enable SMB (Samba) support in GNOME, make sure you have gvfs-smb
, gvfs-backends
or similar package installed. This should be enough to allow browsing the network.
If you know the drive's IP address, press Ctrl+L in the file manager, then enter smb://address
next to Location.
To access it by name, you might need libnss_wins.so
, which usually comes as part of samba
or winbind
packages. Once you have it, edit the "hosts:
" line of /etc/nsswitch.conf
; add "wins
" as the last item. Some distributions will do it for you automatically.
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Thank you. Is there a way I can just view all the available computers/devices instead of having to enter the address or name?– someguyFeb 12, 2012 at 21:06
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Sorry, I should have searched myself before asking. The trick is to install smbnetfs. The workgroup should be mounted under
/mnt/smbnet
after starting the daemon.– someguyFeb 12, 2012 at 21:13 -
@someguy: I did say that installing the apropriate Gvfs backend should be enough to enable network browsing in GNOME. Feb 12, 2012 at 21:17
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There is no gvfs-backends package for my system (Arch) or anything similar that installs smbnetfs.– someguyFeb 12, 2012 at 21:20
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@someguy: There is
gvfs-smb
, though. (I don't recommend using smbnetfs, but you can dig into the AUR and hope the old package still works.) Feb 12, 2012 at 21:20