It has never been easier for Linux to interact within a Windows network. And considering how many businesses are adopting Linux, those two platforms have to play well together. Fortunately, with the help of a few tools, you can easily map Windows network drives onto a Linux machine, and even ensure they are still there upon rebooting the Linux machine.
### Before we get started
For this to work, you will be using the command line. The process is pretty simple, but you will be editing the /etc/fstab file, so do use caution.
Also, I assume you already have Samba working properly so you can manually mount shares from a Windows network to your Linux box, and that you know the IP address of the machine hosting the share.
Are you ready? Let's go.
### Create your mount point
The first thing we're going to do is create a folder that will serve as the mount point for the share. For the sake of simplicity, we'll name this folder share and we'll place it in /media. Open your terminal window and issue the command:
```
sudo mkdir /media/share
```
### A few installations
Now we have to install the system that allows for cross-platform file sharing; this system is cifs-utils. From the terminal window, issue the command:
```
sudo apt-get install cifs-utils
```
This command will also install all of the dependencies for cifs-utils.
Once this is installed, open up the file /etc/nsswitch.conf and look for the line:
```
hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns
```
Edit that line so it looks like:
```
hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] wins dns
```
Now you must install windbind so that your Linux machine can resolve Windows computer names on a DHCP network. From the terminal, issue this command:
```
sudo apt-get install libnss-windbind windbind
```
Restart networking with the command:
```
sudo service networking restart
```
### Mount the network drive
Now we're going to map the network drive. This is where we must edit the /etc/fstab file. Before you make that first edit, back up the file with this command:
```
sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.old
```
If you need to restore that file, issue the command:
```
sudo mv /etc/fstab.old /etc/fstab
```
Create a credentials file in your home directory called .smbcredentials. In that file, add your username and password, like so (USER is the actual username and password is the actual password):
```
username=USER
password=PASSWORD
```
You now have to know the Group ID (GID) and User ID (UID) of the user that will be mounting the drive. Issue the command:
```
id USER
```
USER is the actual username, and you should see something like:
```
uid=1000(USER) gid=1000(GROUP)
```
USER is the actual username, and GROUP is the group name. The numbers before (USER) and (GROUP) will be used in the /etc/fstab file.
It's time to edit the /etc/fstab file. Open that file in your editor and add the following line to the end (replace everything in ALL CAPS and the IP address of the remote machine):
Save and close that file. Issue the command sudo mount -a and the share will be mounted. Check in /media/share and you should see the files and folders on the network share.
### Sharing made easy
Thanks to cifs-utils and Samba, mapping network shares is incredibly easy on a Linux machine. And now, you won't have to manually remount those shares every time your machine boots.
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