How to Share A Folder in Ubuntu 14.04 (Local Network)

This is a beginners’ step by step guide that shows how to share a folder in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS over local network.

Chạy mấy lệnh sau trước:

sudo apt-key update
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install samba samba-dsdb-modules samba-vfs-modules tdb-tools

1. To get started, right-click on the folder you want to share and choose the “Local Network Share” option.

If you don’t see this option, search for and install nautilus-share in Ubuntu Software Center and restart Nautilus by running nautilus -q or just log out and back in.

2. When the ‘File Sharing’ dialog opens, click the box to enable ‘Share this folder’ option. Click the “Install service” button if it asks.

Once the installation process finish, log out and back in.

3. Re-do step 1 to open the ‘File Sharing’ dialog for any folder. Depends on your need, enable write permission and/or guess access.

4. If you want client machines to access this share with a username and password, disable Guest access and do:

• Search for and install system-config-samba in Ubuntu Software Center.
• Start Samba (graphical tool) from the Dash or menu.
• Navigate to menu Preferences -> Samba Users
• Click ‘Add User’ in next window and then select your username, type in a Windows username and password.

Finally you can access this folder in a local network machine using the username (either handbook or ubuntu-laptop in picture) and password.

Access Ubuntu Shared Folders from Windows 7

After you shared a folder in Ubuntu, let’s see how to access that folder from a Windows 7 computer.

Open Windows Explorer. Click on Network to view a list with all computers available (turned on at that time) in the network.

Double click the Ubuntu computer you want to access. A list with all the shared folders and devices from that computer opens.

Double click the folder that you want to access. If you haven’t setup the shared folder to allow Guest access, you are asked to introduce a username and password.

In the first input field, type the name of the Ubuntu computer followed by a backslash (“\") and the name of the user account with access to the shared folder. In the second input field type the password. If you want Windows to remember your username and password, check the box next to’Remember my credentials’. When done, click on OK.

Now the content of the shared folder is shown.

Conclusion

On a network with Windows 7 and Ubuntu computers, you can configure Ubuntu to share files and folders which are easily accessible from a Windows PC. If you want to know more about setting up other PCs on a local network, or how to further utilize the networking features between Ubuntu Linux and Windows 7, check out the articles listed below.