Accessing your Maths Home Directory and Store Space from your laptop (either in the CMS or remotely)

Samba 

Samba is a suite of programs that enables Linux and Windows  to 'talk' to each other. Samba is used at the CMS to enable a computer that is not part of the CMS network (typically your laptop) access to the CMS network.

Necessary conditions for Samba to work for you

1. You must be located in the CMS and using Eduroam WiFi or one of the laptop network sockets  ("wired Eduroam")

or

2. You are connected to the CMS using the Maths VPN.

Windows

Please refer to the instructions here.

MacOSX

To view your DAMTP home directory via a laptop running MacOSX. In the Finder select the "Go" menu -> "Connect to Server...", then in the Server Address field you can use smb (replacing username with your actual username):

     smb://samba.maths.cam.ac.uk/username

There will be a login dialog asking for the Workgroup or Domain, Name and password. For our current setup the Domain should not matter. Enter your Departmental Windows username and password.

An icon will appear on your desktop - a globe with your username underneath. Double clicking on this opens a window with your Maths home directory files and directories inside.

To see your home directory via a terminal/shell window:

     cd /Volumes/username

Linux

Make sure your laptop has the file /sbin/mount.cifs installed so that it can mount Samba filesystems. On Ubuntu the command to install this program is

sudo apt-get install cifs-utils

Decide where you want to mount the directory, in this example /mnt/home. If this directory does not exist then create it (as the superuser)

     mkdir /mnt/home

Set the variable U to your username and copy the line starting with smbmount. Say the user is spq201 then

     U=spq201
     mount -t cifs //samba.maths.cam.ac.uk/$U /mnt/home -o username=$U,domain=MATHS

You will be prompted for a password - the password you must give is your Maths windows password, as you are using the Maths Samba server.

Your home directory is now mounted at /mnt/home. So that cd /mnt/home will show your Maths home directory.

Copying files

You can copy your files over ssh using a free graphical program such as winscp (Windows), cyberduck (MacOSX), or nautilus (Linux). Or you can use command-line tools such as sftp, scp or rsync. See the manual pages for details. Because these programs work over ssh, they can be used from any Internet-connected computer in the world, not just on the laptop network.

Remote logins

You can ssh/putty into a Maths computer from your laptop as you would from any other networked machine, or use Winex to run a graphical Linux session under Windows.