Sharing files between Linux and Windows

If you are running a guest and host operating systems, many a times you would like to share some drives or directories between them.  It may be to share some documents or data or text files, etc.  And to share a directory (example, C:/Share/Edu) between Windows XP host and Ubuntu guest OS you can do the following.

1. First allow for sharing on Windows by right click on the directory of interest (say, C:/Share/Edu) and select "Sharing And Security..." and it will bring up "Edu Properties" window.  Select Sharing tab and set "Allow this number of users" to 2 or the number you like.  Since the sharing is between guest and host OSes, setting it to 2 will suffice.

  In Windows Explorer > Go to C:/Share/Edu > Right click and select "Sharing And Security" > (In new window) > Select "Sharing" tab > Set "Allow this number of users" radio button value to "2"

2. Assuming you have already installed Ubuntu (version 9 or above), go to System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager as shown below which will bring up new window and look for smbfs (Samba File System) and choose it for download.  Ubuntu will automatically select other packages that are needed for this package.
Note: You need to have sudo authority (or root privileges) to download and install a package.

3. Once done bring up a terminal on Ubuntu and run

hadoop@ubuntu> sudo -s  (if you are not root already)
root@ubuntu> mkdir /mnt/win_edu
root@ubuntu> mount -t smbfs -o username=YOUR_WINDOWS_USER_NAME  //WINDOWS_HOSTNAME/Edu  /mnt/win_edu
Password: ENTER_PASSWORD
# Replace YOUR_WINDOWS_USER_NAME, WINDOWS_HOSTNAME and ENTER_PASSWORD appropriately.
# This will mount windows shared "Edu" directory on to /mnt/win_edu mount point.
#  NOTE: Instead of "smbfs" option above you can also use "cifs - Common Internet File System" supported by Samba, Windows 2000, XP, etc.

4. Change directory to /mnt/win_edu from Ubuntu terminal and you should see all windows files in Edu directory.  You can also check all mounted directories by running

root@ubuntu> mount

5. After you are done to unmount the file system simply run

root@ubuntu> umount -v -d /mnt/win_edu

Or if you just want to copy files between two systems use WinSCP freeware.  Get the guest IP address by running ifconfig and look for "inet addr", then connect to it from WinSCP.

hadoop@ubuntu> ifconfig
eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0c:29:f7:a0:41  
          inet addr:10.15.14.107  Bcast:10.15.15.255  Mask:255.255.254.0

Cheers,
Shiva