11.12. Connecting Linux Clients to a Samba Domain with Graphical Programs

Problem

You or your users prefer a nice graphical interface to find and connect to Samba shares. You want to know what is available for Gnome and KDE, and also if there are any standalone programs to use in any X Windows environment.

Solution

Here are the four best graphical utilities for network browsing and connecting to Samba shares:

Discussion

Each program has its quirks. Let's look at how to use each one:

To browse the network, type smb:/ in the Location bar.

To browse specific hosts, type smb://netbios name or hostname.

You can open and edit documents directly, and save them back to the share.

To browse the network, type smb: in the Location bar.

To go directly to a share, type smb://servername/sharename, like smb://samba11/carla.

Nautilus browses only. It does not mount shares, and it does not permit you to edit files directly. What you have to do is open a file, save it to a local drive, edit it, and then drag-and-drop a copy of the file back to the Samba share.

Smb4k is the easiest one to use, and has the best feature set. When you start it up, it automatically scans the network and lists all shares, and shows a nice graphic of available space on the shares. When you click on a share, it is automatically mounted in your /home/smb4k/ directory. You may configure this, as well as a number of other useful tasks, like automatically logging you in, selecting a specific server for retrieving a browse list, and configuring a list of hosts and shares that use different logins.

LinNeighborhood is a nice, standalone LAN browser that runs in any Linux graphical environment. LinNeighborhood usually requires a bit of configuration. Open Edit → Preferences. Then, under the Scan tab, enter either the hostname or NetBIOS name of your master browser, which in this chapter is "windbag" or "samba11."

Start a new network scan with Options → Browse Entire Network.

On the Miscellaneous tab, you can enter a default username and select your default mount directory. This should be a file that already exists in your home directory, something like /home/carla/samba.

On the Post Mount tab, configure your default file manager. Be sure to hit Save on every tab, and after you close the Preferences menu, click Edit → Save Preferences.

You can bring up a menu for logging in as different users on different shares simply by clicking on the share you want.

See Also