ARCHIVED: At IU, how do I use Samba to mount or map to the RFS on my workstation?

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Note:
In accordance with standards for access control mandated by the HIPAA Security Rule, you are not permitted to access data containing protected health information (PHI) using a group (or departmental) account. To ensure accountability and maintain appropriate levels of access control, all users must use an individual login for all work involving PHI.

Indiana University's Samba servers act as a gateway between Research File System (RFS) servers and your workstation, providing a fast, easily configured way of accessing RFS files and folders. Samba lets you access your RFS home directory and any shared directories you have permission to access as if they were local drives on your workstation.

To access the IU RFS from your workstation using Samba, follow the instructions below for your operating system. If you're connecting from off campus (i.e., outside the IU network), you first must establish a VPN connection; see About the IU VPN.

On this page:


Windows

Note: To connect via Samba to a UITS Research Storage system from a Windows computer that is not joined to the Indiana University ADS domain, you may need to run a tool that disables LM/NTLMv1. See ARCHIVED: What is the tool that disables LM/NTLMv1, and where can I get it?

In Windows, to access your personal or group RFS account using Samba:

  1. In Windows 8.x, press Win-e. In the left column of the resulting window, right-click Computer or This PC.

    In Windows 7 and earlier, from the Start menu, right-click Computer.

  2. Select Map Network Drive....
  3. In the "Path:" or "Folder:" field, enter the path for the RFS account (replace rfs_account with your Network ID username or a group account username):
      \\rfs.iu.edu\rfs_account
  4. Click OK or Finish.
  5. When prompted, enter the appropriate (personal or group) username and passphrase.

    Note: Add ads\ to the username to indicate the IU ADS domain; for example:

      ads\pamidala

    Your RFS folder will be mapped to a drive on your workstation.

OS X

In OS X, to access your personal or group RFS account using Samba:

  1. In the Finder, from the Go menu, select Connect to Server....
  2. In the Connect to Server window, in the "Server Address:" field, enter the path for the RFS account (replace rfs_account with your Network ID username or a group account username):
      smb://rfs.iu.edu/rfs_account
  3. When prompted, enter the appropriate (personal or group) username and passphrase, and then click Connect. Your RFS folder will be mounted shortly.

Linux

In Linux, to access your personal or group RFS account using Samba, use one of the following methods:

  • If you have root access on the local machine, use mkdir to create an empty mountpoint directory for your personal or group account (e.g., /rfs), and then use mount.cifs to mount the specified directory on RFS:
      mkdir /rfs
      mount.cifs //rfs.iu.edu/rfs_account /rfs -o user=netid,uid=localuserid,sec=ntlmv2,domain=ads
  • If you do not have root access on the local machine, issue the same commands as above, but from your home directory:
      mkdir ~/rfs
      mount.cifs //rfs.iu.edu/rfs_account ~/rfs -o user=netid,uid=localuserid,sec=ntlmv2,domain=ads

    Note: If mount.cifs does not work without root access, contact your system administrator.

In either example above, replace both rfs_account and netid with your Network ID username or a group account username; you will be prompted for the corresponding Network ID passphrase. Also, replace localuserid with a local non-root username or UID that should have access to the RFS account. You can omit uid=localuserid if the non-root username or UID is identical to the user=netid username. Alternatively, you can substitute gid=localgid to map an RFS group account to a group username or UID on the local machine.

Note: In some cases, option sec=ntmlv2 does not work under Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (RHEL 6); try using sec=ntlmssp instead.

When you are finished, unmount the RFS account:

  • As root, enter:
      unmount.cifs /rfs
  • As a non-root user, enter:
      umount.cifs ~/rfs

Shared files and projects

Shares

You can access shared files in another user's RFS space if the user has set permissions allowing you to do so; see ARCHIVED: At IU, how do I share my RFS data with other users using an AFS client?

To connect via Samba to shared files on RFS, replace rfs_account (from the path examples in the previous sections) with afs-home; for example:

  • In Windows:
      \\rfs.iu.edu\afs-home   
  • In OS X:
      smb://rfs.iu.edu/afs-home
  • In Linux:
      //rfs.iu.edu/afs-home

Mounting or mapping to afs-home places you in the top-level directory on RFS. From there, you can traverse the directory tree to another user's home directory. For example, to navigate to the home directory for user dsidious, cd to the d directory, then to the s directory, and then to the dsidious directory.

Projects

To connect via Samba to your RFS projects space, replace rfs_account (from the path examples in the previous sections) with projects; for example:

  • Windows:
      \\rfs.iu.edu\projects
  • OS X:
      smb://rfs.iu.edu/projects
  • Linux:
      mount.cifs //rfs.iu.edu/projects mountpoint -o user=netid,uid=localuserid,sec=ntlmv2,domain=ads

    Replace netid with your Network ID username, localuserid with your username or UID on your local machine, and mountpoint with the name of an empty mountpoint directory where you want to mount the projects directory.

Once you are connected, you will see a list of project names. Only project owners and persons to whom they've granted access can view files.

This is document arxp in the Knowledge Base.
Last modified on 2018-01-18 14:53:01.