Using Samba, Second Edition

smbutil and mount_smbfs

The smbutil and mount_smbfs programs provide SMB client functionality for FreeBSD, Darwin, and Mac OS X. Neither of the programs is part of the Samba distribution; however, we are including them to give you a little additional support in case you have BSD-related Unix systems on your network.

smbutil

The smbutil program provides functionality similar to some of the Samba suite’s command-line utilities. It can be used to list the shares available on an SMB server or perform NetBIOS name lookups.

The first argument given to smbutil is one of a number of subcommands and is usually followed by arguments specific to the subcommand. For example, to list the resources offered by a server, use the view subcommand, and enter your server password when prompted:

% smbutil view //vamana
Password:
Share        Type        Comment
-------------------------------------------------------------
public        disk
SS2500        printer     Stylus Scan 2500
IPC$          pipe        IPC Service (Samba 2.2.5)
ADMIN$        disk        IPC Service (Samba 2.2.5)
leonvs        disk        User Home Directories

5 shares listed from 5 available

If you wish to connect to the server with a username that differs from that on your client, you can specify it on the command line by preceding the name of the server with the username and using an at sign (@) as a separator:

% smbutil view //leonvs@vamana

You can also include the password after the username, using a colon (:) as a separator, to avoid being prompted for it:

% smbutil view //leonvs:leonspassword@vamana

Typing ...