Mounting Windows Shares using Samba

Mounting Windows based shares using Samba is a relatively simple process.

If the share is on a Windows XP, Server 2000 or NT machine you can use the following command:

mount -t smbfs -o username=username //server/share /mountpoint

However for Server 2003 the above command will not work so you simply change smbfs for cifs as shown below.

mount -t cifs -o username=username //server/share /mountpoint

The username should be that of your Windows user and in both examples you will be prompted for your windows password.

The command above will work for all versions of Windows. If you are having difficulty mounting or receive an error with invalid file type ensure that the samba-client packages for your distribution are installed.