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Connect Windows (vista or 7) to a linux share – Ubuntu

Have you ever thought it would be great to have a linux dropbox to share files from computer to computer in your network? Well, I did and found it was a bit difficult to set up right off the bat!

Sharing Folders on Ubuntu Linux

Before you share any folders, you will need to do a little setup on ubuntu. After some digging, I found the following blog that explains this setup.

http://www.goitexpert.com/general/connect-vista-to-a-linux-share–ubuntu/

The blog article goes on to say that there are two things that need to be done. First make sure your samba version is 3.0.22 or higher. Second you need to give samba a username and password. This will be the username and password that windows will use to connect to the share.

 
sudo smbpasswd -a username
 

Once you have samba upgraded and configured a username and password, you can start sharing folders and files. To Share folders or files, you need to right click on the item and go to sharing options. Then enable sharing.

Connecting to the Share via Windows Vista or Windows 7

In windows you need to go to your network. If your lucky, it will show up in the list of servers, but you will probably have to plug the local alias or local ip into the address bar.

\\server-name
 

 
\\192.168.1.#
 

Windows should now bring up a login window. I don’t know if it matters about the host in this login prompt, but I didn’t bother taking chances. I entered my username as

server-name\username

And voila, you can now access your linux shared folder. Amazing!