Hello my name is Andrew Gee and welcome to this Ubuntu screencast.
In this screencast you will learn how to browse Samba shares from within Ubuntu,
how to make a quick shortcut on your desktop to access these shares,
and finally, how to share your own files over Samba.
Here is a diagram of a two computers, one is running Windows and one is running Ubuntu
You need to share files between these computers, but how do you do it?
This is where Samba comes in,
Samba is an open source implementation of Windows filesharing.
It allows you to access and create files over a network, using all sorts of platforms.
So you are able to share between Ubuntu and Windows, Ubuntu and Mac,
Ubuntu and a different Linux distribution or even Ubuntu and Unix.
So now you know a bit of background, let us begin
One thing you will be able to do is browse Samba shares on remote computers
To do this, you need to go to the Places menu and then click on the Network icon.
This will bring up a network browser window, where you will be able to choose Windows shares by double-clicking on a Windows network icon
Here you can see both workgroups exist on the network.
The default one is mshome and you are most likely to be connecting to this one, so double-click on that.
and see the computers in that workgroup.
Double-click on the computer you want to access and that will load the computer.
From here you are able to see what shares are on this computer.
Double-click on the one you want to access, that will show you all the files within.
Now you are seeing the share as if it is on the local computer.
You are able to do the normal file manipulation that you would want,
such as deleting, copying, pasting, cutting and all the rest.
If the share is read-only you can not change anything.
So you can get to the shares on the network, you probably do not want to go through all of that browsing each time.
What we will do is make a shortcut on the desktop, this will provide a quick and easy connection to the share.
Go to the Places menu, click Connect to server...
In the Service type dropdown pick Windows share,
in the Server box type the name of the computer you want to connect to,
in the share box type the name of the share you want to connect to, on the computer,
in the folder box you can type the folder to go directly in if you want to,
the next two boxes are advanced and in the final box allows you to name the connection.
Once you have filled out all of that information, click the connect button.
As you can see here, an icon has appeared on your desktop, which you are able to double-click on
to bring up the share, where all the files are, straight to it.
So you now know how to access shares from other computers,
but how about setting up a share on this computer?
Go to System, Administration, Shared Folders, enter your password,
If this is the first time you have run this, you will get a box looking like this saying you need to install some packages.
Make sure the two boxes are selected and click the Install Services button.
You see all the packages being downloaded, that need to be installed.
Now you can see them being installed.
Once the installation has complete you will see this, go ahead and click the Close button.
Then you will see this box here, where you can manage your shared folders.
Clicking the Add button will bring a box up like this, allowing you to set up a share,
In the path box you have got to select what folder you would like to be shared,
in this case it is my home directory.
In the second make sure it says the SMB protocol, because that is what Samba runs on.
The next two boxes allow you to customise the name and description
and the final option allow you to change whether it's read-only or not
Once you have set up all those settings go ahead and press Ok
You can see that your share has appeared in the box
and that will be there for computers that are remote.
Thank you for watching this screencast.
Find more at screencasts.ubuntu.com.