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#1 2010-04-08 17:37:31

pickboy87
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From: Minnesota
Registered: 2010-02-12
Posts: 84
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[SOLVED] Windows 7 and Arch Networking - Where to start?

So I'm not a 'n00b' by any means, but when it comes to networking, I'm at a complete loss. So essentially I have Arch Linux w/ Openbox on my computer and my girlfriend runs Windows 7 on hers. The problem is that she likes to watch movies/tv shows on the T.V. that I currently have hooked up through HDMI to DVI on my computer.

So essentially I need to have a way to access a shared folder/file so that I can play it off my computer on to the T.V. I have no idea where to start. I remember I used SMBclient in Ubuntu (which was hit or miss at times). I keep hearing about SSH, but not even sure where to begin with that or what exactly to do with it. Any advice or suggestions would be awesome.

Thanks,
-Nate

Last edited by pickboy87 (2010-04-09 22:50:57)

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#2 2010-04-08 18:00:33

HoboJ
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Registered: 2010-04-04
Posts: 28

Re: [SOLVED] Windows 7 and Arch Networking - Where to start?

I'm confused. So your computer is hooked up to the TV? Or is it her computer that is hooked up to the TV? If it's the former I don't see why you would need to share anything over your network unless her computer has shows and movies you want to watch through your computer. Now if it's the latter and you have shows and movies on your computer that need to be accessed on hers you're going to need to install samba and configure it. Good resource for that is here > http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Samba

Last edited by HoboJ (2010-04-08 18:01:05)

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#3 2010-04-08 18:08:56

pickboy87
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From: Minnesota
Registered: 2010-02-12
Posts: 84
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Re: [SOLVED] Windows 7 and Arch Networking - Where to start?

HoboJ wrote:

I'm confused. So your computer is hooked up to the TV? Or is it her computer that is hooked up to the TV? If it's the former I don't see why you would need to share anything over your network unless her computer has shows and movies you want to watch through your computer. Now if it's the latter and you have shows and movies on your computer that need to be accessed on hers you're going to need to install samba and configure it. Good resource for that is here > http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Samba

Sorry, let me elaborate a bit. My computer has both a monitor and a TV hooked up to my graphics card. My T.V. is hooked up via a HDMI to DVI cable. My girlfriends computer is 'connected' to my computer via a router. She simply needs to access files from _her_ computer on mine so that she can display the videos on _my_ computer via the TV display. I suppose I could have left out the T.V. part to begin with so it made a bit more sense.

I'll have to look at samba again, does it work well with Windows 7?

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#4 2010-04-08 18:57:54

pickboy87
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From: Minnesota
Registered: 2010-02-12
Posts: 84
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Re: [SOLVED] Windows 7 and Arch Networking - Where to start?

Hmm..still digging around, but at least I 'see' her computer now. I keep getting this though:

[nathan@linux_box ~]$ smbclient -L JENNIFER-PC -U%
Domain=[WORKGROUP] OS=[Windows 7 Ultimate 7600] Server=[Windows 7 Ultimate 6.1]

    Sharename       Type      Comment
    ---------       ----      -------
Error returning browse list: NT_STATUS_ACCESS_DENIED
Domain=[WORKGROUP] OS=[Windows 7 Ultimate 7600] Server=[Windows 7 Ultimate 6.1]

    Server               Comment
    ---------            -------
    JENNIFER-PC          

    Workgroup            Master
    ---------            -------
    WORKGROUP            JENNIFER-PC

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#5 2010-04-08 19:00:28

potatoe
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Registered: 2008-05-31
Posts: 13

Re: [SOLVED] Windows 7 and Arch Networking - Where to start?

Sounds like you want to mount an smb/cifs (windows's file sharing protocol) share on your computer, so you can play the movies directly over the network without having to copy them. I've always used smbfs (requires samba) for that, but it sounds like the cifs module is the new way to do it. Look at http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sam … e_mounting -- you also need to have the 'smbclient' package installed, but the 'samba' package shouldn't be necessary. Keep in mind that the commands shown with a '#' prompt are meant to be done as root / through sudo. I just tried the "# mount -t cifs ..." line shown in the wiki, and it worked just fine for me. I should point out I did specify a username/password as shown in the wiki example, since I've never had luck connecting to windows shares anonymously (not even from Windows clients).

If you want to copy the files, so you don't have to leave the Win7 computer on while watching them, you can do the mounting, copy the files to somewhere on the local hd, and then umount the share. If you have Gnome or KDE installed, you can just open the share directly in one of their file managers and copy the files to your computer without ever doing the mount command: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sam … ome_or_KDE

You could also setup a samba server on your computer so it's just a matter of dragging the files over to your archlinux computer on the win7 machine, without having to setup a share of wherever the movies are on the win7 machine, but that's a lot of configuring work and probably not worth it unless you have several windows machines you want to be able to upload movies from.

If you want to setup an SSH server instead, it's not hard. 'pacman -S openssh' and then follow http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/SSH … _others_in and http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/SSH … SHD_Daemon -- editing the sshd_config file shouldn't be needed for your basic configuration. Then you'd run an sftp client on the windows 7 machine and upload the movies to anywhere your user has write access to on your archlinux computer. I think Filezilla has sftp support; I'd recommend against winscp, it was pushing for me to install 3rd-party adware last time I tried it.

Doing a 'mount -t cifs ...' is easiest, though.

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#6 2010-04-08 19:06:13

potatoe
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Registered: 2008-05-31
Posts: 13

Re: [SOLVED] Windows 7 and Arch Networking - Where to start?

pickboy87 wrote:

Hmm..still digging around, but at least I 'see' her computer now. I keep getting this though:

[nathan@linux_box ~]$ smbclient -L JENNIFER-PC -U%
<SNIP>
Error returning browse list: NT_STATUS_ACCESS_DENIED
<SNIP>

Sounds like you need a username / password to get at the shares. I'm sure there's some way of doing it anonymously, but I've never had any luck. Use 'smbclient -L JENNIFER-PC -U<her login> -p' to send a username / password (it will prompt you for the password). If that works, you can then use the same values in the mount command.

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#7 2010-04-08 23:07:28

davidm
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Registered: 2009-04-25
Posts: 371

Re: [SOLVED] Windows 7 and Arch Networking - Where to start?

Just to make you aware of another option besides Samba:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSHFS
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sshfs

It's more native to Linux than samba (smb) and is considered much more secure since it goes over ssh.  This may be what you have heard of when people spoke of ssh?  The weak point is setting up a good free ssh daemon on Windows 7 but I know options exist (Incidentally the frustrations of configuring a good ssh server port on a windows xp box was one of the motivating factors for my switching exclusively to Linux).  Also if she has Windows 7 64 bit, check on the status of sshfs on that platform first before c omitting to it.  I believe in the past there was a nasty bug which I see here:

http://code.google.com/p/dokan/issues/detail?id=103

I don't have any first hand experience to say whether it is fixed now unfortunately as I only run Linux these days. smile

Last edited by davidm (2010-04-08 23:09:28)

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#8 2010-04-08 23:29:55

Duologic
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From: Belgium
Registered: 2007-11-11
Posts: 249

Re: [SOLVED] Windows 7 and Arch Networking - Where to start?

If you can't get samba and ssh configured...


You can use the Windows 7's FTP service and mount the ftp on your system. Easy to handle any kind of file transfer and no strange protocols.


(Or you can convince her to use Arch Linux, like it convinced my girlfriend)

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#9 2010-04-09 00:23:26

pseudonomous
Member
Registered: 2008-04-23
Posts: 349

Re: [SOLVED] Windows 7 and Arch Networking - Where to start?

My suggestion is: "just use samba tools", this is what they're for.  There's a huge collection of documentation about using Samba & friends out there and most of it's pretty good.

Once you start sharing folders one way you'll probably eventually want to share them the other way so you probably want to go ahead and install and configure the whole samba server.  Well, that's just my opinion.  I'm sure you'll figure out something that works.

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#10 2010-04-09 00:47:36

HoboJ
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Registered: 2010-04-04
Posts: 28

Re: [SOLVED] Windows 7 and Arch Networking - Where to start?

potatoe wrote:

Sounds like you need a username / password to get at the shares. I'm sure there's some way of doing it anonymously, but I've never had any luck. Use 'smbclient -L JENNIFER-PC -U<her login> -p' to send a username / password (it will prompt you for the password). If that works, you can then use the same values in the mount command.

This should do the trick. Also windows 7 doesn't like blank passwords for network sharing so make sure the account you login to using this method has a password associated with it.

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#11 2010-04-09 01:39:06

pickboy87
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From: Minnesota
Registered: 2010-02-12
Posts: 84
Website

Re: [SOLVED] Windows 7 and Arch Networking - Where to start?

Sweet, thanks for all the replies guys. I had to leave for work before I got a chance to try any of your replies (and I have to work 'effin early tomorrow). I did force her to create a simple password and now using the 'smbclient -L JENNIFER-PC -U <her login> -p' saw her shares properly.

[nathan@linux_box ~]$ smbclient -L JENNIFER-PC -U Jennifer -p
Enter Jennifer's password: 
Domain=[JENNIFER-PC] OS=[Windows 7 Ultimate 7600] Server=[Windows 7 Ultimate 6.1]

    Sharename       Type      Comment
    ---------       ----      -------
    ADMIN$          Disk      Remote Admin
    C$              Disk      Default share
    IPC$            IPC       Remote IPC
    Users           Disk      
Domain=[JENNIFER-PC] OS=[Windows 7 Ultimate 7600] Server=[Windows 7 Ultimate 6.1]

    Server               Comment
    ---------            -------

    Workgroup            Master
    ---------            -------

So at least I'm getting somewhere. When I get the chance tomorrow, I should be able to mess around with it again. Thanks very much Potatoe.

Duologic wrote:

(Or you can convince her to use Arch Linux, like it convinced my girlfriend)

Trust me, I've tried. Although I REALLY don't want to deal with ATi drivers on Linux. I tried with Ubuntu and it was a mess. It worked, but barely.

Davidm wrote:

Just to make you aware of another option besides Samba:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSHFS
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sshfs
....

I'll have to look into that. I always hear people mention SSH and I've never really knew exaclty what a secure shell did. I'll have to dig around in that. I don't need anything secure really since it's just us two sharing files, but it's still worth a look at. The more I know about Linux, the better smile


HoboJ wrote:

This should do the trick. Also windows 7 doesn't like blank passwords for network sharing so make sure the account you login to using this method has a password associated with it.

Yeah, Windows is retarded. I was hoping it would be easy with no passwords, but apparently it's the exact opposite. Oh well.

I'll update you guys tomorrow. Thanks once again for all the response. I really appreciate it smile

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#12 2010-04-09 22:47:45

pickboy87
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From: Minnesota
Registered: 2010-02-12
Posts: 84
Website

Re: [SOLVED] Windows 7 and Arch Networking - Where to start?

w00t. I got it working. It took a bit of tweaking a few trial and errors, but it's up and running. So after running the:

smbclient -L JENNIFER-PC -U Jennifer -p

command, I was able to see what she had for shares (although it's still not showing everything 100%, but at least I was connected to her computer. Afterwards I created a directory:

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/windows

I then was able to mount her shared directory into my newly created folder by running this:

sudo mount -t cifs //JENNIFER-PC/Users/Jennifer/Downloads /mnt/windows -o user=Jennifer,password=jennifer,workgroup=WORKGROUP

I can now see and access her files that she has shared. Yay. Now all I need to do is add it to fstab and I can auto-mount it every time I boot up. Thanks for all the tips guys. All this hard work deserves a beer smile

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