Mike
McBride
Jost
Schenck
04/08/2000
1.00.00
KDE
KControl
Windows shares

# Windows Shares

## Introduction

In many small local area networks the SMB protocol is used to offer network services. Names like "Windows Network" or "Windows for Workgroups Network" or "LanManager" are often used as well. Using SMB you can access so-called "shares" (i.e. directories made available by the server) as well as printers.

KDE comes with builtin support for the SMB protocol. As KDE is network-transparent that means you can access SMB shares from everywhere you can access your local files, for example in the Konqueror file manager and in the file dialog. To make use of this you should provide KDE with some information on your SMB network. But don't worry, this is normally pretty simple as for example all the Windows clients in your network need and have the same information.

## Use

In the windows shares control module you will find three sections:

- In the Network Settings section you provide basic information about your network. This will mainly be used to offer comfortable browsing of the network

- In the User Settings section you can store information on how to access specific servers or shares

- In the Password Policy section you can configure KDE to remember SMB passwords

### Network Settings

In this section you have to provide some basic information KDE needs to offer browsing of your SMB network. If you don't know what all this is about, you can ask the administrator of your network about these addresses or maybe you can just copy them from your neighbour's machine.

The Browse Server is the host you want to browse when using KDE's Network Neighbourhood. Unless you have an SMB server running on your own system, you will have to provide a server here if you want to use the Network Neighbourhood.

The Broadcast Address is a special reserved network address which always ends in 255. For example: if your local area network is a private class C network with IP numbers beginning with 192.168.0 (which is quite common in small companies), the broadcast address is 192.168.0.255. In many cases, this address will be guessed correctly. However, you have to provide it here if KDE fails to detect it or if your computer belongs to more than one network.

Optionally, you can provide a WINS Address, i.e. the address of a WINS server in your network. You don't really need a WINS server and many networks don't have one. However, using a WINS server may significantly improve your network performance.

### User Settings

Although there are a lot of insecure SMB networks out there which allow access to anyone, in principle you have to authentificate yourself to access the services of an SMB server. SMB offers two ways of authentification: share and user level security.

- Share level security means that a certain share (i.e. a directory offered by an SMB server) has a password assigned to it. You have to provide the password to access the share

- User level security means that there is a number of users, everyone of which has a password. You have to provide your user name and password to access shares

As you may use different shares and different SMB servers, which may use different authentification methods, you can store authentification information for them. The combination of a server with a certain authentification method is called a "binding". If you access a share for which a corresponding binding exists, KDE will automatically use the right authentification method. If you supply a password, you will then not be prompted for it anymore.

While it makes things more comfortable if KDE stores your SMB passwords, this may be a security problem. If you are using SMB in a security conscious environment, you should not store your passwords.

To add a binding just enter the server's name, either a share or a user name (called "Login") and optionally a password into the appropriate fields. Then click the Add button and the binding appears in the list of bindings. To remove a binding, select it in the list of bindings and press the Delete button.

### Password Policy (while browsing)

If you try to access a share for which KDE has not stored a password yet you will be prompted for a password. You can tell KDE to generate a new binding every time you have to enter a password for a share, so you only have to enter a password once and KDE will remember it afterwards. Just select the Add new bindings option. However, you might consider this to be a security risk, so in a security conscious environment selecting Don't store new bindings is recommended.

## Section Author

This section written by: Jost Schenck jost@schenck.de