How to access linux share from windows

If you work with different operating systems, it’s handy to be able to share files between them. This article explains how to set up file access between Linux (Fedora 33) and Windows 10 using Samba and mount.cifs.

Samba is the Linux implementation of the SMB/CIFS protocol, allowing direct access to shared folders and printers over a network. Mount.cifs is part of the Samba suite and allows you to mount the CIFS filesystem under Linux.

Caution: These instructions are for sharing files within your private local network or in a virtualized host-only network between a Linux host machine and a virtualized Windows guest. Don’t consider this article a guideline for your corporate network, as it doesn’t implement the necessary cybersecurity considerations.

Access Linux from Windows

This section explains how to access a user’s Linux home directory from Windows File Explorer.

1. Install and configure Samba

Start on your Linux system by installing Samba:

dnf install samba

Samba is a system daemon, and its configuration file is located in /etc/samba/smb.conf. Its default configuration should work. If not, this minimal configuration should do the job:

[global]
        workgroup = SAMBA
        server string = %h server (Samba %v)
        invalid users = root
        security = user
[homes]
        comment = Home Directories
        browseable = no
        valid users = %S
        writable = yes

You can find a detailed description of the parameters in the smb.conf section of the project’s website.

2. Modify LinuxSE

If your Linux distribution is protected by SELinux (as Fedora is), you have to enable Samba to be able to access the user’s home directory:

setsebool -P samba_enable_home_dirs on

Check that the value is set by typing:

getsebool samba_enable_home_dirs

Your output should look like this:

3. Enable your user

Samba uses a set of users and passwords that have permission to connect. Add your Linux user to the set by typing:

smbpasswd -a <your-user>

You will be prompted for a password. This is a completely new password; it is not the current password for your account. Enter the password you want to use to log in to Samba.

To get a list of allowed user types:

pdbedit -L -v

Remove a user by typing:

smbpasswd -x <user-name>

4. Start Samba

Because Samba is a system daemon, you can start it on Fedora with:

systemctl start smb

This starts Samba for the current session. If you want Samba to start automatically on system startup, enter:

systemctl enable smb

On some systems, the Samba daemon is registered as smbd.

4. Configure the firewall

By default, Samba is blocked by your firewall. Allow Samba to access the network permanently by configuring the firewall.

You can do it on the command line with:

firewall-cmd --add-service=samba --permanent

Or you do it graphically with the firewall-config tool:

5. Access Samba from Windows

In Windows, open File Explorer. On the address line, type in two backslashes followed by your Linux machine’s address (IP address or hostname):

You will be prompted for your login information. Type in the username and password combination from step 3. You should now be able to access your home directory on your Linux machine:

Access Windows from Linux

The following steps explain how to access a shared Windows folder from Linux. To implement them, you need Administrator rights on your Windows user account.

1. Enable file sharing

Open the Network and Sharing Center either by clicking on the

Windows Button > Settings > Network & Internet

or by right-clicking the little monitor icon on the bottom-right of your taskbar:

In the window that opens, find the connection you want to use and note its profile. I used Ethernet 3, which is tagged as a Public network.

Caution: Consider changing your local machine’s connection profile to Private if your PC is frequently connected to public networks.

Remember your network profile and click on Change advanced sharing settings:

Select the profile that corresponds to your connection and turn on network discovery and file and printer sharing:

2. Define a shared folder

Open the context menu by right-clicking on the folder you want to share, navigate to Give access to, and select Specific people… :

Check whether your current username is on the list. Click on Share to tag this folder as shared:

You can display a list of all shared folders by entering \localhost in File Explorer’s address line:

3. Mount the shared folder under Linux

Go back to your Linux system, open a command shell, and create a new folder where you want to mount the Windows share:

mkdir ~/WindowsShare

Mounting Windows shares is done with mount.cifs, which should be installed by default. To mount your shared folder temporarily, use:

sudo mount.cifs //<address-of-windows-pc>/MySharedFolder ~/WindowsShare/ -o user=<Windows-user>,uid=$UID

In this command:

• <address-of-windows-pc> is the Windows PC’s address info (IP or hostname)
• <Windows-user>is the user that is allowed to access the shared folder (from step 2)

You will be prompted for your Windows password. Enter it, and you will be able to access the shared folder on Windows with your normal Linux user.

To unmount the shared folder:

sudo umount ~/WindowsShare/

You can also mount a Windows shared folder on system startup. Follow these steps to configure your system accordingly.

Summary

This shows how to establish temporary shared folder access that must be renewed after each boot. It is relatively easy to modify this configuration for permanent access. I often switch back and forth between different systems, so I consider it incredibly practical to set up direct file access.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

In my previous article, Interoperability: Getting started with Samba, I covered installing and configuring Samba shares on a Linux server. The real power of Samba comes when Windows clients can communicate with Linux file servers. In this article, I will cover how you can access Samba shares from both Linux and Windows clients.

Install the Samba client packages

To access Samba share from Linux clients we need to install a few Samba client packages.

On the client machine, install the samba-common and samba-client packages.

# yum install samba-client samba-common  -y

Check for available shares

Let’s check if we can access our shares from the server. We can use either the hostname or ip address of the server. If you use the hostname, make sure DNS is working.

# smbclient -U user -L 192.168.1.122

Enter SAMBAuser's password:

        Sharename       Type      Comment
        ---------       ----      -------
        print$          Disk      Printer Drivers
        myshare         Disk      my share
        IPC$            IPC       IPC Service (Samba 4.9.1)
        user      Disk      Home Directories

Reconnecting with SMB1 for workgroup listing.

        Server               Comment
        ---------            -------

        Workgroup            Master
        ---------            -------
        SAMBA                SAMBA-SERVER

Create a directory that we can use as our mount point. I’m going to create a directory under /mnt, but you can use any directory you would like to. You may need to configure SELinux on that directory.

# mkdir /mnt/myshare

Now, mount the share.

# mount -t cifs -o username=user //192.168.1.122/myshare /mnt/share

Password for user@//192.168.1.122/myshare:  ********

Now that we’ve mounted our share, we can check the mounts with the following command:

# df -h

Persistent mount

Let’s make that directory mount persistently so it can withstand a reboot. Using the text editor of your choice, edit the /etc/fstab file. You can do this in multiple ways, but I’m going to demonstrate two ways to mount the Samba share at boot in /etc/fstab.

# vim /etc/fstab

The first option provides a username and password for the Samba user in the fstab.

//192.168.1.122/myshare /mnt/share cifs username=user,password=password,_netdev 0  0

The other option is to create a credential file. You can call this file anything, but I would like to call it cred. I would like to place credentials files in the home directory of the user. In our demonstration it will be /home/user/.cred.

//192.168.1.122/myshare /mnt/share cifs credentials=/home/user/.cred,_netdev 0 0

The _netdev option is important since we are mounting a network device. Clients may hang during the boot process if the system encounters any difficulties with the network.

Now create that .cred file inside the user’s home directory.

# vim /home/user/.cred

Next, add the Samba user’s username and password.

username=user
password=password

Finally, mount all filesystems.

# mount -a

Access a share from a Windows client

I will be using Windows 10 as my client machine with a workgroup called SAMBA. We need to create a local user account on the Windows machine that matches the username and password of the Samba user account we created in my previous article. Although account creation is not necessary, this will make things simpler when accessing the share.

Like I mentioned above, this step is optional and you can skip it completely. Although there are multiple approaches to adding a new local user on a Windows machine, for the simplicity of this article I will be using PowerShell. Launch PowerShell as an administrator and issue following commands:

PS > $password = Read-Host -AsSecureString
PS > New-LocalUser -Name “user” -Password $password

Now that we have created a new local user account matching the Samba user account, we can log in to Windows with our newly created user account.

Access a share from Windows Explorer

To access the Samba share from Windows Explorer, start typing the IP address to our share in the search area. I am using the hostname of the Samba server. In my case, it is centos. You can also access the share by using the IP address of the Samba server.

You might be prompted to enter the username and password to access the share if you skipped the local user creation process. If you get prompted for credentials, enter the Samba username and password we created in the previous article.

You will need to enter the Samba share path every time you want to access the share. There is a better way to access the share by mapping a drive to Samba share in Windows.

Mapping a drive to a Samba share

To map a drive to the Samba share, open PowerShell and issue following command:

PS > NET USE M: \centosmyshare

Wrap up

Accessing a Samba share on Linux and Windows is easy. With this basic setup, you will be able to access file shares from client machines in your network. With somewhat more configuration, you can deploy Samba shares in a domain environment. Samba can do more than file share. If you would like to learn more about Samba, read this article about Windows and Linux interoperability. This is a basic set up, but you can do so much more with Samba.

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I like the idea of having a shared drive attached to my always-on Linux system, so that all my computers (Windows and Mac) can access those in a central place. It’s like a NAS without having a NAS box if you know what I mean. The easiest way to accomplish this is by using the Samba Protocol.

Essentially we’ll declare a part of our Linux system as a Samba Share, setup credentials in Samba, then let users from other systems access these files. It’s a little complex to get going, but I’ll show you all the relevant steps here. This works on CentOS 7 and Fedora.

Installing Samba

Let’s get the packages installed first:

yum install samba

This should bring up samba and install samba-common-tools as well. Let’s also start and enable Samba on system start while we’re at it.

systemctl enable smb
systemctl start smb

Setting up Samba Credentials

I already have a regular Linux user on my system, let’s call him “shareuser”. Samba needs its own password for a user, which can be a different one from the system password. We can set this up with the following command (as root), which will prompt for a new password.

smbpasswd -a username

You can run the same command as the system user too without specifying a user. man smbpasswd has more details. Once confirmed, the current (or specified) system user will be added to the Samba user group.

Setting up the Shared Folder

We need to pick a folder we’d like to use. It can live anywhere on the system, even on mounted drives. All we need is the full path to it and set it up in the Samba configuration file. We can find it here: /etc/samba/smb.conf

Use your favourite text editor and add the following to the bottom of the file:

# My Samba Share
[supershare]
path = /home/shareuser/Desktop/supershare
available = yes
valid users = shareuser
read only = no
browsable = yes
public = yes
writable = yes

I’m calling my share “supershare” here, but that’s arbitrary. The idea is that you could have various locations for different users on one system. My system (and Samba) user is called “shareuser”, and my folder location is on his Desktop. It could be anywhere else of course.

Setting the Samba Protocol

With the above configuration, macOS and other Linux systems can already access the shared folder. Windows 10 however will throw an error (or rather not connect without any clue as to what’s wrong), because the SMBv1 protocol is no longer supported for security reasons. Something about a the WannaCrypt/WannaCry exploit and ransom demands.

To keep us safe, let’s ask Samba to use a newer protocol by default instead. SMBv2 will work, and depending on your Linux (or rather Samba) version you can go up to 3 or 4. Find the [global] section in your Samba config file and add the following as the last line before the next block (leave all other lines intact).

[global]
min protocol = SMB2

After any change to the config file, we need to restart the Samba service:

systemctl restart smb

Firewalld and SELinux

By default Samba connections are blocked by the firewalld service. We can fix this by adding the following rule:

firewall-cmd --add-service samba --permanent
systemctl restart firewalld

If SELinux is enabled on the system, you can optionally add the following value to allow the Samba service write access (not necessary if SELinux is disabled or permissive):

setsebool smbd_anon_write=1

Accessing Files from Windows 10

Now comes the moment of truth: can we connect from Windows? There’s various ways of doing this, but the easiest one is to setup a permanent connect so we don’t have to type in our credentials every time we want to access those files. Open Windows Explorer and choose Add a Network Location.

This lets you specify the location on the network, either via IP address or name. Start with two backslashes, like so

• \10.1.2.3supershare
• or
• \yourserversupershare

If the connection is successful, Windows will prompt you for credentials.

And that’s it! Now you can navigate to your shared Linux folder and copy files to it or remove them.

Accessing files from macOS

On the Mac it’s equally easy. Head over to the Go menu in your Finder and select Connect to Server.

Mac likes us to specify the protocol with which we’re connecting and accepts IP addresses and server names alike:

• smb://10.2.3.4/supershare
• or
• smb://yourserver/supershare

It willl ask for credentials when you connect and offer to store them for next time.

Further Reading

• https://www.prajwaldesai.com/cant-connect-to-file-share-obsolete-smb1-protocol/
• https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/how-to-configure-samba-to-use-smbv2-and-disable-smbv1-on-linux-or-unix/

Windows does not offer support for the ext2, ext3 and ext4 file system, the file system used by Linux distributions, ext4 being the most used today. Now you will understand why when you have connected a hard drive with an ext2, ext3 or ext4 file system, Windows invites you to format it without having the option to access its content.

The solution to this problem is to use one of the different applications available on the Internet that allow us to access this type of unit.

Another interesting option, if we are usually forced to access this type of drive from Windows, is to use the Windows Subsystem for Linux , a functionality available from Windows 10 and with which we are going to find the versatility of accessing data stored in all drives on our computer, regardless of the file system.

Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

The fastest and easiest method to access ext2, ext3, and ext4 formatted drives used by Linux is to use the Windows Subsystem for Linux, better known as WSL. WSL allows us to run Linux tools from the command line which allows us to forget about using a virtual machine or using dual boot.

In addition, it also allows us to run Windows applications from the command line and Linux applications in Windows. This functionality available on the device is not natively active, so the first thing we must do is activate it.

Activate Windows Subsystem for Linux

To activate the Windows subsystem for Linux, we go to the Cortana search box and enter the terms Windows Features , clicking on the first result that is displayed.

Next, a window will be displayed with the Windows features available and that we can activate or deactivate according to our needs. In our case, we must look for the Windows Subsystem for Linux option, check the corresponding box and click OK.

Seconds later, the system will invite us to restart the computer to correctly activate this function on our computer. Once we have restarted, we must install a Linux terminal environment from the Microsoft Store. In this example, we are going to use Ubuntu, as it is one of the most popular and used.

Once we have downloaded the application, we run it and wait a few minutes for the installation to finish. The first thing we need to do is create a user account, an account that is not related to the Windows user account and password.

The next step is to mount the drive so that it is natively available in Windows via file explorer.

Accessing Linux drives from Windows

The first thing we need to do is mount the drive via WSL. If we do not mount the drive first, we will never be able to access it, so you should not skip this step.

If our computer only has one hard disk, from which the Windows operating system is managed, when connecting any other unit, the system will assign the next letter of the alphabet, which, in this case, would be the letter d of the unit where we want to associate it .

To mount the Linux ext2, ext3 or ext4 formatted drive, we need to type the following command, where d is the drive from which it will be available.

sudo mkdir /mnt/d sudo mount -t drvfs d: /mnt/d

From this moment, we can close Ubuntu and go to the Windows file explorer to access all the content available on that storage unit as if it were any other hard drive with a format compatible with Windows.

From the file explorer, we can copy files from both Windows to the Linux drive and from Linux to Windows by dragging the files as usual.

What happens if we want to connect from Windows to a Linux computer to access its files? All the solutions that we have explained above are focused on connecting to hard drives or partitions with Linux format, invalid options to connect to other computers.

Remote desktop /RDP

The easiest method to connect to a Linux computer from Windows is by connecting remotely. In this way, not only will we be able to manage the Linux computer from our Windows PC, but we will also be able to share files very quickly and easily.

The first and foremost thing is to know the IP that the Linux computer is using through the ipconfig command from Terminal. Next, we access the configuration options of the router and enable port forwarding with the IP of the equipment, the port to be used and as a Remote Desktop name to be able to identify it.

The router address, along with the access data, is usually at the bottom of it.

In the next step, we must inhabit the remote desktop in Ubuntu, a function that is available in Windows, through the command:

sudo apt install xrdp

Next, in Windows, we open the Windows Remote Desktop Connection application. In the Computer section, we must enter the IP of the computer and the username of the Linux computer to which we are going to connect.

If everything works correctly, the application will ask us for the computer password and we will be remotely managing the Linux computer.

A much simpler option to remotely connect to a Linux computer from Windows and access its files is to use TeamViewer, as long as you don’t want to take advantage of the native tools that Windows and Linux make available to us.

Samba

Samba is one of the most complete solutions for accessing and sharing files between Windows and Linux computers in a very simple way.

This application uses the same protocol as Microsoft, SMB, to create shared folders on the same local network. The first thing we must do is install it on our computer through the command

sudo apt-get install samba

Once installed, we close Terminal and go to the Ubuntu file explorer, select the folder we want to share by clicking the right mouse button and selecting Share this folder.

We set the name of the folder under which it will be displayed in Windows, check the boxes Allow other people to create and delete files in this folder and Guest Access. Finally, click Create share.

In Windows, with the IP of the Linux computer, we open the file explorer and write the IP of the computer preceded by two backslashes.

FTP

Another interesting option that we can use to share files between a Windows computer and another or others managed by Linux is to use the veteran FTP protocol.

The solution that we are going to use, in Ubuntu, is vsftpd, included natively in the system. The first thing we must do is install it through the command:

sudo apt-get install vsftpd

Once the installation process is finished, we edit the vsftpd.conf file that has been created in the etc folder. Within this file, we go to Allow anonymous FTP (Disabled by default). anonymous endable=NO and we change NO to YES . In this way, it will not be necessary to create user accounts to access.

If your idea is to access remotely from outside your network or other users to access those files, you should not modify this option.

We restart the system and go to Terminal again to start the FTP server with the changes we have made using the command:

sudo etc/init.d/vsftpd start

To access the FTP server that we have created on Linux from Windows, we will use the FileZilla application, an open source application also available for macOS and Linux.

The IP address of the server to which we are going to connect is the one associated with the Linux computer while the connection port is 21 (by default).

With programs to read EXT4 in Windows

In addition to the above two ways, if we don’t mind resorting to third-party programs, we can install some specialized programs on our computer to open Linux drives from Windows. Some of the best known are the following.

linux-reader

One of the most popular and widely used applications for accessing Linux ext-formatted drives from Windows is Linux Reader. This application, available through its website , allows us to conveniently access Linux drives just like we can do from Windows Explorer to open, copy and move documents.

Linux Reader automatically handles mounting and unmounting of drives , so you don’t need any knowledge of Linux to access the content stored on these drives. In the left column, all units are displayed.

To access all the functions offered by this application, we must go through the box and buy a license. If your needs are basic and you just need occasional access to drives with the Linux file system, the free version is more than enough.

Ext2Fsd

Ext2Fsd allows us to mount drives in ext2, ext3 and ext4 format on our Windows computer to be able to access their content from Windows Explorer just as we can do with WSL. Once installed, it will invite us to restart the computer.

The application allows us to mount the unit so that it is only read (it does not allow us to copy and delete content) or to set read and write permissions, the best option if we want to share data between different units just as we can do natively with the Windows solution.

You can download Ext2Fsd from the following link , as its website is not available.

Other deprecated options

The number of applications that today allow us to access drives with Linux in ext4 format from Windows is very limited, if not practically non-existent. Except for the solution that Windows offers us are WSL and Linux Reader, the rest of the applications that were used for this function, stopped updating and are not compatible with ext4 .

Explore2fs was one of the first applications released to allow Windows to interact with drives with the ext2 and ext3 file system. However, and although the application is compatible with both Windows 10 and Windows 11, it is not compatible with the ext4 file system, the most widely used today.

Another interesting option to consider, only if the file system is ext2, is the Ext2 application. This application, with an interface very similar to the Windows file explorer, allows us to open, copy and move files between Windows and Linux drives, but only with the ext2 and ext3 file system. It is not compatible with ext4, so it is not a solution to read these types of drives.

You’ve tried to use a flash drive or SD card to transfer files from Linux to a Windows computer, and you found it annoying and tiring, especially when there are lots of files to move, and it’s taking ages to complete.

You don’t have to waste your precious time using storage devices when you can move files quickly and easily over your local network (LAN).

The main methods used to do this are:

• Create a share in Linux to access it from Windows using Samba
• Create a share in Windows to access it from Linux

Create a share in Linux and access it from Windows using Samba

The best and fastest way to do this is by installing the Samba suite. Samba is an ideal solution for sharing files between different devices such as a Windows, Linux or Mac machines. The machines need to be networked with a generic router.

Windows machines come with functionality that allows them to work with Samba out of the box, so you only need to install one package for Linux machines.

1. On your Linux machine open the location containing the files you wish to share.

2. Right-click on the file and select “Sharing Options.”

3. If you get a prompt asking you to install Samba services, click “Install service.”

4. Click Restart session once Samba service is installed to enable sharing.

5. Check the “Share this folder” and “Allow others to create and delete files in this folder” boxes.

6. Click “Create Share” to complete the process.

7. Open Terminal and type the following commands:

sudo smbpasswd –a USERNAME

Replace USERNAME with your own user name.

sudo cp /etc/ samba/ smb.conf /etc/samba/smb.conf.old
sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

8. Find the global section and add the lines:

encrypt passwords = true
wins support = yes

9. Press Ctrl + O and Ctrl + X to save and exit.

10. Restart Samba:

sudo service smbd restart

11. Go to the Windows machine and right-click Start, then select Run.

12. In the Run box, type the command: \computer_nameshare_name5.

Note: the computer name in this case can be the IP address of the Linux machine, which you can find by going to the Linux computer and opening terminal, then typing ipconfig.

13. Type the Linux computer name and share the resource name.

14. A prompt will be displayed asking for your credentials.

15. Type in your Linux username and password. Click OK.

16. Try to access the shares from your Windows computer.

The new server should be displayed in “My Network Places” in Windows.

Alternatively, do the following: right click Start and select Run, then enter: //server. Replace server with the name or IP address of the machine that runs your Samba server. A window with the browsable shares from the server will open.

Note: to access non-browsable shares, use this code: \servershare name

Create a share in Windows to access it from Linux

This will be done in three steps as follows:

• Enable sharing on Windows
• Share the folder
• Access it from Linux

Enable sharing on Windows

Start by ensuring the network settings are configured to allow a connection from the Linux system. To do this:

1. Go to Control Panel and click “Network and Internet.”

2. Select “Network and Sharing Center.”

3. The Network and Sharing Center window will open. Click “Change Advanced settings.”

4. Enable these two settings: “Network Discovery” and “Turn on file and printer sharing.”

5. Click Save changes.

6. Sharing is now enabled.

Share the folder

Create a shared folder for the Linux system to see, connect and access. You can share anything, so follow these steps:

1. Find the folder you want to share and right-click it.

2. Select “Properties.”

3. Under the Sharing tab, click “Advanced Sharing.”

4. Under the Advanced Sharing window, enable the “Share this folder” option.

5. Click “Permissions.”

Note: in the Permissions window you can restrict access to the folder to specific users or accounts. Select “Full Control permission to Everyone” to give any user access. This way anyone can read and write changes to the files in the folder you share.

If, however, you want to restrict access to specific user accounts, remove the “Everyone” user, add the users you want and then assign the relevant permissions to them. The user accounts are those that are on the Windows system (not the Linux system).

6. Click OK to close the Permissions window.

7. Click OK to close the Advanced Sharing window.

8. Go to the Security tab in the main properties window.

Note: configure similar permissions as those in the sharing settings so that Linux users can access the shared folder.

If they don’t match, the most restrictive settings are applied.

However, if the user you intend to share with already has security permissions, close the window and move to the third step. Otherwise, click “Edit” to add a user, click “Add” in the Permissions window that opens, and enter the user’s details.

9. Click OK on all windows. The folder should now be shared with your network.

Access from Linux

You can mount the shared folder using Linux GUI or by using a command line. For our example we’ll use Terminal because it works across many distributions, and it’s faster.

To do this, you’ll need the cifs-utils package to mount SMB shares. The complete the following steps.

1. In the terminal, type:

sudo apt-get install cifs-utils

2. Make a directory.

3. Mount the share to the directory

4. Create a folder on the desktop. (It’s easier to access from here.)

5. Create and mount the folder using these commands:

mkdir ~/Desktop/Windows-Share
sudo mount.cifs //WindowsPC/Share/home/username/Desktop/Windows-Share –o user=username

Note: if prompted for the root password of the Linux system and for your user account on Windows, insert each of them and run the command.

You’ll now see the contents of the Windows share and will be able to add data to it.

Are you now able to transfer files to and from Linux and Windows systems? Tell us what worked for you, and if you have a different method, share with us below.