From a Windows-based computer system in the department  you can connect to your home directory on our linux server, filesvr.phas.ubc.ca, and save files directly from any Windows application (eg. Netscape, MS-Word, etc.). Or, conversely, you can save an email attachment with pine and access it directly with your MS-Office application. This is also a good way to ensure that files gets backed up regularly.

To connect to your home directory, open the Windows Explorer.
Go to the Menu Bar and choose Tools -> Map Network Drive.

Set up the connection as follows:

• Drive: is any unused drive (by convention we use H:)
• Set Folder: to \\filesvr.phas.ubc.ca\homes
• to have your H: drive appear every time you log on to this computer - click the Reconnect at Logon box.

In most cases, that's all there is to it.

1. Open Finder
2. Click on the Go menu
3. Select the Connect to Server option
4. On the Connect to Server window, in the Address field, type the following: smb://filesvr.phas.ubc.ca/homes
5. Click the Connect button
6. On the File System Authentication screen, enter your username and password
7. Click OK
8. The drive icon should then appear on the Desktop
9. To disconnect, drag the drive to the Trash.

1. Login as a normal user
2. Open a terminal:
1. Open Finder
2. Go to Applications
3. Select Utilities
4. Double-click on Terminal
3. Type the following commands inside the Terminal window after making sure you are in your home directory:

mkdir phashome
mount -t smbfs //username@filesvr.phas.ubc.ca/homes phashome

4. Enter your password when prompted
5. List your files (optional):

ls phashome

Mount Method

You can map your home directory on your linux computer with the command:

mount -t cifs -o username=<username> //filesvr.phas.ubc.ca/homes /mnt/phashome

Make sure you have the smbclient package installed and (for ubuntu) the smbfs package. If the above command fails with an error like "mount: mount point /mnt/phashome does not exist", you need to create the phashome directory with the following command:

mkdir /mnt/phashome

You may need to be root in order to execute these commands. If so, just put "sudo" in front of the commands, for example:

sudo mkdir /mnt/phashome

For Ubuntu, etc you will enter your password. For Redhat, Fedora, Suse, etc. you will need to use the root password.

For more information type "man smbmount".

Here is an example of a CIFS mount command where you need to specify the authentication server name (in this case "mercury") as well as the username for authentication:

mount -t cifs -o username=mercury\\username,password=mypwd //saturn.ubc.ca/Apps /mnt/saturn

sshfs Method

As an alternative to mount, you could use sshfs.

To mount your home dir:

sshfs username@hyper.phas.ubc.ca:/home/username /mnt/phashome

To unmount your homedir:

fusermount -u /mnt/phashome

To do this you need to first have installed sshfs. For example on ubuntu, you would use the following command:

sudo apt-get install sshfs