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How to mount a Samba (Windows) file share to a folder in Ubuntu Linux

17 Apr 2009

To mount a Samba (Windows) file share to a folder in Ubuntu Linux, you need to have Samba Filesystem Support installed. The easiest way to do this is via apt-get on the command line:

sudo apt-get install smbfs

After the installation has finished, create a directory that the Samba share will be mounted to (e.g. "windows_share" in the "/mnt" directory):

sudo mkdir /mnt/windows_share

Finally, use the mount command to mount the remote shared folder to your newly created directory (change the IP address, paths, username and password in the example below as needed):

sudo mount -t smbfs //10.0.0.100/shared_folder/
  /mnt/windows_share -o username=Guest,password=

To unmount the Samba share, use the umount command (change the path in the example below as needed):

sudo umount /media/windows_share

To automatically mount the Samba share when you boot up your computer, you'll need to edit your "/etc/fstab" file as detailed on this page on the Ubuntu Forums.

For more detailed usage information on the mount and umount commands as well as fstab, see their man pages:

man mount
man umount
man fstab
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