Share files between Windows and Ubuntu

The following article will provide you in detail information about Orc Must Die 2 Weapons and Traps. The game moves with a common gameplay of...
Sep 01 2012
Now forget the transfer of large files on USB. With Orb, you can store all your multimedia files...
Feb 25 2010
It's crazy that everything available on the internet is in the form of PDF files. But these...
Feb 10 2010
There are many benefits to replace the standard MP3 player with mobile phones. First, you only...
Feb 03 2010
Microsoft Loopback - a tool for testing a virtual network environment where there is no network...
Jan 16 2010
Discover the best software and Web services to enhance your photos with multimedia presentations...
Jan 12 2010
How to use your favorite sites even when you're not connected to the Internet? Nothing could be...
Jan 07 2010


For sharing files, you need a network. Now what if in you have a network with computers using both, Linux and Windows. Windows has a different Network stack and Linux has a different network stack. So there is no way this could be done by just plugging in the network cable and assigning IP Addresses. So what to do in a mixed OS environment? How to network Linux and Windows computers. For this we must make the windows computer to get to communicate with the linux computer. Linux has a utility for sharing the linux computer with windows known as Samba. This utility helps the linux computer communicate with windows computer the way windows computer communicate with other windows computer. Windows uses SMB as a network protocol which stands for Server Message Block. SMB is not Open Source. Hence linux developers have developed Samba as an alternative to SMB. Now that we are clear about some basic, lets do this.

First make sure your both windows and linux computers are in a same network range. We need to install Samba on the linux computer, in this case I have used Ubuntu as my linux distribution. Open terminal from Applications menu > A ccessories > Terminal. Now type :

Code:
sudo apt-get install samba smbfs smbclient 

Now provide your root user’s password so that aptitude can install samba. Now if you get a message saying you already have samba, just ignore it and continue with the following steps.


We need to edit the samba configuration settings so that we could use the windows shares according to our needs. Open terminal and type :

Code:
sudo gedit /etc/samba/smb.conf 

Now find the code where the workgroup is mention. It will be “workgroup = WORKGROUP”. The default workgroup is workgroup. You must change this to the name of your workgroup. I will select TECHARENA, so the section will now look like : workgroup = TECHARENA. Second thing to change in the file is “browseable”. If it is not “yes” change it to yes so it must look like “browseable = yes”. The third thing is to change is option. The field is “read only”. If the windows computer has given a read only share then you cannot change the read only to no from this file. If you have the write permission you can change the “read only” field to “no”. It will now look like : “read only = no”.

Now save changes and close the file. Again open terminal and type :

Code:
sudo /etc/init.d/samba force-reload 
Now you need to create a username for samba shares, this will differ from linux user. Open terminal and type : 
 
Code:
sudo smbpasswd-a <username> 
Give the username and password which is given to the windows computer for less confusion. Make sure you have a password on Windows computer or you will not be able to access the shares. Now you need to install support for NTFS file system on Ubuntu. Open terminal and type : 

Code:
sudo apt-get install ntfs-config 

This will install better

Add new comment