smbclient (mount, Windows XP, SFS, file sharing)

Since I always use some GUIs, I don't really remember anymore how to connect to a Windows machine via the command line. smbclient -L windowshost shows you the shares that are available. Often, you you cannot browse them without a login/password for that windows machine, therefore you need to type smbclient -L windowshost -U username And occasionally the netbios name doesn't work either and you need to replace it by the IP address. Connecting is like mounting a filesystem mount -t smbfs -o username=username,password=password //windowshost/share /windows/tmp Special characters such as a white space in the Windows username such as Monika Mustermann have to be escaped! mount -t smbfs -o username=Monika\ Mustermann,password=password //windowshost/share /windows/tmp I had lots of trouble with Windows XP until I realized, that the default file sharing method for standalone XP is SFS ("Simple File Sharing"). This method is really simply stupid: Either you let everybody access your stuff via the network or only yourself. This has to be switched of (Desktop > My Computer > Tools > Folder Options >...) in order to be able to allow specific users access to your data.