How To Connect To Windows Shared Folders From Linux Mint/Ubuntu Desktop

One of the earlier posts described how to connect to a Windows share directly from the Linux Mint / Ubuntu Terminal.

To do this from the Linux Mint / Ubuntu desktop without using Terminal :

1. Press Alt + F2 and enter the IP address or the Windows system where the shared folders are hosted after the “smb://“. (This is similar to opening up “Run” box in Windows and typing \\serverip\ to access it).

Accessing Windows shared folders using samba

2. Enter the required credentials that are needed : the user name and password who can access these Windows shared folders.(This sharing permissions need to be first set on the Windows system for each of the folders that are shared.)

User credentials for accessing shared folders on Windows

3. Once authentication is successful, the available shared folders will now be listed and can be accessed as desired.

List of shared folders

4. The accessed shared folders will now also automatically be mounted and be present on Linux Mint/ Ubuntu desktop as a shortcut.

Shared Windows folders mounted on Linux desktop

Cheers.

 

 

  1. eaglesgift says:

    Doesnt work at all with Linux Mint 14

    • ihaveapc says:

      The folders should be set to sharing from Windows, also make sure to enter same credentials (user name and password) to connect to them as defined in Windows sharing. The example used here is Linux Mint 14 by the way.

      • eaglesgift says:

        I can’t enter any credentials. It doesn’t even let me get that far. I’ve just discovered that I can browse to the folders using smb://pc_name_/shared folder_name with Thunar though (or whatever the default file manager is called in xfce?) I’m a bit disappointed because I had Mint 13 on this netbook and I could browse the network automatically with that. However, that was the 64-bit version so maybe I’ll try installing that.

        Thanks for your reply in any case. I use this netbook as a kind of mini music player with some speakers in my bedroom so it has to be able to access my Windows PC downstairs where all my files are stored. You might think that installing Windows on it would be the way to go but Win7 doesn’t like the wireless card at all and XP drops the connection too often. Only Linux distros seem to like it (Aspire One 532h) Sorry to ramble on – thought I’d explain what I was doing, in case you thought I was just being annoying! Cheers

        • ihaveapc says:

          Try the IP address of Windows system you are connecting to so that it will be like smb://192.168.0.10. Use ipconfig from Windows command prompt to get the IP address first and make sure it is pingable from Linux Mint.

          The Run command in Linux Mint (Alt + F2) can then be used for accessing samba share through this IP if the file manager throws up errors.

          Cheers.

          • eaglesgift says:

            I did try it with the IP address as you suggested at first. I got that little red icon with a cross in it when I entered the address and when I hit enter, it did nothing. I’m just in the middle of installing 64-bit Xfce so I’ll try again when it’s done (or maybe in the morning if I don’t have time). I remembered that the 32-bit version had a disappearing battery indicator that I could never fix on version 13 and it seems to still be the case on 14 so there were a couple of reasons I thought I’d try the 64-bit flavour. Thanks again.

            Just tried it again on 64-bit Mint 14 (Xfce) – no joy. My dialog box looks a little different to yours – it says Application Finder at the top and only has two buttons underneath the text box – Close and Launch. I double checked the IP address and I can ping it from a terminal no problem.

            The actual error message that pops up when I hover over the little red x is: Failed to execute child process “smb://192.168.1.4” (No such file or directory)

          • ihaveapc says:

            Try mounting the Windows share from Linux Terminal directly, here is how

            https://www.ihaveapc.com/2012/06/how-to-quickly-mount-windows-share-from-terminal-in-linux-mint-ubuntu/

            Other option is to go to Places >Connect to server, select Windows share, entering the credentials and having domain name set as Workgroup. Hope this helps.

          • eaglesgift says:

            I think you must be using Cinnamon or Mate, I don’t have connect to server option under places on my desktop. Re. the Linux terminal method, smbfs seems to have been superseded by cifs-utils package so I installed that instead. The way to mount shares seems to be fairly similar though, so I managed to get them mounted in the end. I also added entries to fstab so that I don’t have to keep doing the same thing every time I boot up (had to set my Windows machine to use fixed internal IP address).

            Thanks for your suggestions – they got me going in the right direction. I guess it would be easier to buy a stereo but where would be the fun in that! Cheers

          • ihaveapc says:

            That’s good to hear and yes using Mate. Cheers.