SharingToLinux

Connecting to a Server by Mounting your HDA

I was having trouble in Ubuntu accessing my network drives. I used "Connect to server..." under "Places" and I was able to access the files fine until I needed to access them in Firefox or other programs to upload them.

It was explained to me that it's being mounted via Nautilus and that's not truely "mounted" in the linux sense.

Here's the resolution.

NOTE: you may need to install smbfs first with

sudo aptitude install smbfs

I opened up a terminal window. In my user folder, there were already folders called "Music", "Pictures", "Documents" and "Vidoes". I wanted to use those folders so I didn't have to create more. If they didn't exist though, they could be created using the command:

mkdir Music

Then of course repeat the command replacing the word "Music" with "Pictures" "Documents" and "Movies" or "Videos".

Now time to mount. I used the following commands (of course, replace the username with your username unless you are also kevin):

sudo mount.cifs '\\hda\music' Music -o user=kevin

sudo mount.cifs '\\hda\pictures' Pictures -o user=kevin

sudo mount.cifs '\\hda\docs' Documents -o user=kevin

sudo mount.cifs '\\hda\movies' Videos -o user=kevin

And that was it. Now the files in Amahi are mounted as if they are local files on my computer.

Just to check, I opened up Firefox, logged into Gmail, composed a new message and clicked "Attach a file" then "Browse". Sure enough, the files were all there.

Keep in mind, this does not auto-mount so you would have to do this again each time you boot to linux. An auto-mount solution would be helpful.