Connecting to a Network/Samba Share

Owned by Marc Miller
Last updated: Nov 18, 2023 by Marc Miller
3 min read

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This is a rough guide on how to connect to a Network/Samba Share

Important

Please note: Mapping or connecting to the Network/Samba share requires the computer to be on the Campus Network or making use of the Campus VPN.

Some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) block some or all VPNs. ECI has no control over non-university networks and cannot guarantee a secure connection on them.

Please refer to Why is my VPN (Virtual Private Network) not Working? and VPN FAQ for more information.

For PC

The best way is to map a network drive to the share.  To do this, follow these steps:

1. Open an Explorer window

2. Click on My Computer or This PC

3. Click on Map Network Drive

4. Select a drive letter for the pulldown next to Drive

5. In the box next to Folder: type \\servername\share 

Please note: servername and share are not valid names and must be changed. For example, most users (except for those connecting to research or administrative shares) will need to change servername to:  samba.engr.ucsb.edu and change the share to your COEusername

6. Finally, you will be asked for your login credentials. Here, the username is just the part before the @ character on your COE email address.  For example: johndoe would be the username for johndoe@engineering.ucsb.edu.

For Mac

1.Be sure you are on Finder.

2. Do Command-K to pull up the Connect to Server window.

3. Type in:

smb://servername/share

or

cifs://servername/share

Please note: servername and share are not valid names and must be changed. For example, most users (except for those connecting to research or administrative shares) will need to change servername to:  samba.engr.ucsb.edu and change the share to your COEusername

 4. Finally, you will be asked for your login credentials. Here, the username is just the part before the @ character on your COE email address.  For example: johndoe would be the username for johndoe@engineering.ucsb.edu


Note

If you are staff, (not a student) and do not know the share name that you need to connect to, please send a ticket to your tech support, as there may be specific sharenames for your area.

Can't connect to the share

If you are unable to make a connection to the share, and you are also using the Campus VPN or you are on the Campus Network, there is a likely chance that you may have a Firewall setting that is preventing the connection.

Please visit this page to confirm that you have connected successfully to the Campus VPN Service prior to connecting to a remote Lab computer.  If it reports an "off-campus" address, you will need to troubleshoot your VPN Connection.

Please see this page for further VPN troubleshooting information.

If it reports an "on-campus" address, please try disabling the Firewall to test whether or not you can connect to the share.

If you are able to make the connection, you may want to do a Google Search on 'samba ports firewall <name of security suite>' on instructions on how to allow your computer the ability to connect to samba shares.

Please note that there are multiple servers and shares in use by different departments, if you are already signed into a share and want to connect to another share that uses a different server or credentials, you will have to eject the first share.

Windows specific issues

Windows 10

In some cases, Windows 10 may have issues connecting to the Samba Share.

To fix this, you may need to do the following:

  1. Press the Start button (Should be the windows Icon in the lower left hand corner)
  2. Type Turn Windows Features on or off and click on it when it shows up.
  3. In the Windows Features window, scroll down until you find SMB 1.0/CIFS
  4. Click on the + next to it, and check the box for SMB 1.0/CIFS Client
  5. Click on OK.
  6. It will ask you to restart your computer with the Restart Now button.  You will need to restart your computer before you can try connecting to the network share.

Windows in General

In some cases, you may need to put engineering\<username> for the username if it does not recognize the credentials.