Use pyNeighborhood to Access and Manage Windows and Linux Shares on a Net

Hello, all.

pyNeighborhood is a really great program that allows you to access your local network, mounting and unmounting shared folders so that you can access them from your computer. It works with both Windows and Linux shares, and requires no command line input. It is available in the repositories, but requires a little bit of setup to get working properly. I just got it set up and working on my computer, so here is my how to to get pyNeighborhood up and running properly.

Step One: Install pyNeighborhood

Open up Synaptic Package Manager and do a search for samba. Mark pyNeighborhood, samba-common, smbclient, and smbfs for install.

Apply changes and close the package manager.

Step Two: Create a Folder for Mounting Shares

Open up your home folder by going to Main Menu -> Places -> Home Folder.

Click on File, Create New Folder (Ctrl + Shift + n) and name the new folder 'mnt' without quotes. In the new 'mnt' folder, create another new folder called 'lan' without quotes.

Close the file manager.

Step Three: Configure pyNeighborhood

Open pyNeighborhood through Main Menu -> Internet -> pyNeighborhood

Go to Edit -> Preferences

in the General tab, change the Mount folder to read

/home/[your user name]/mnt/lan

Check the box that says 'Remove mount points after unmount'

Note: if you require a username and password to log into your networks shared folders, you can uncheck 'Always use anonymous login' and enter that here.

Next, navigate to the Network tab.

If you need to specify a Workgroup in order to access your network, here you can uncheck 'Always use msbrowse' and enter the name of the Workgroup.

Also, check the box 'Try to retrive IP address when adding a machine from the group browser'

Navigate to the SMB tab.

Make sure that 'Enable SMB' is checked, and look at the current Mount and Unmount commands. They should say 'smbmount' and 'smbumount' respectively.

These commands have to be run with root priviledges. Add the word 'sudo' to the beginning of each command, withou the quotes, so they read:

sudo smbmount
sudo smbumount

Now navigate to the CIFS tab, and do the same thing here that you did under the SMB tab:

Ensure that 'Enable CIFS' is checked

Add 'sudo' to the beginning of the 'mount.cifs' and 'umount.cifs' commands so they read

sudo mount.cifs
sudo umount.cifs

Now navigate to the File Managers tab

Highlight the 'xterm -e mc' entry and click on the button that says' Remove'

Now click on the Add... button and add

nautilus

Note: You can replace nautilus with your file manager of choice (thunar, pcmanfm, dolphin, etc.)

Once you have added your file manager, click 'Ok' at the bottom of the preferences menu.

pyNeighborhood should now be configured to work properly with your network

Step Four: Using pyNeighborhood

To mount shares, start in the left pane, where it should say 'Groups'

Right click and click 'Scan'

Your local workgroup should appear here, so right click on it and click 'scan' to show the machines in your workgroup

Choose a machine to browse, right click on it, and click add. (you can also double click)

Try to retrieve the machine's IP address if it is not already entered, and then click 'Ok'

The machine should now appear in the right hand pane.

Right click on the machine and click 'scan' to show the machine's shared folders.

To mount a share, right click on it and click 'mount -> mount as SMB' (note: if SMB does not work the share will automatically be mounted through CIFS).

Now navigate to the 'Mounts' tab, where you will see your freshly mounted share.

Right click on the share and click 'File Manager' to view the share as if it were a folder on your own computer!

Repeat the process for any other shares you wish to browse.

And that's it!

Note: to allow Windows or Linux users to access your shared folders without a user name and password, you will have to edit your /etc/samba/smb.conf file to contain the following:

security=share

Note: Potentially Hazardous gkSudo Access Fix

There is another tutorial on these forums that recommends altering pyNeighborhood's main menu command to read 'gksudo pyNeighborhood' and running the whole program as root. The problem with this is that it opens your file manager with root access as well, allowing for potentially hazardous file altering and deletion.

If you have previously followed those instructions (found here and elsewhere on the internet) and you would like to undo them, complete the following steps:

Go back through Main Menu -> System -> Preferences -> Main Menu, go to the Internet tab, right click on the pyNeighborhood tab, and click on properties.

The entry for Command should currently say 'gksudo pyNeighborhood' without the quotes.

Change it so that it says 'pyNeighborhood' or simply erase the 'gksudo' part, again without quotes.

If you changed the shortcut in system tools as well, you can change that one back as well.

Close the Main Menu editor.

Post here with whether or not this works for you, along with any relevant specifics if it's not working.

Source: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=888674