Hack 39 Browse Windows Shares

Tweak a few settings for the lisa daemon so you can graphically browse Windows shares on your network.

Microsoft has made it easy to browse for and connect to network fileshares. If you are used to browsing network shares under Windows, learning how to browse network shares under KDE might seem like a black art. Under Knoppix, the issue is aggravated by the fact that Knoppix does not automatically configure LISa (KDE's LAN information server) to work beyond the local machine. Luckily, it takes only a few steps to get network browsing up and running.

First, reconfigure LISa so it scans for all fileshares on your network. To do this, you must move lisarc, LISa's read-only configuration file, out of the way, and then start kcontrol as root so that you can create a new configuration file:

knoppix@ttyp0[knoppix]$ sudo mv /etc/lisarc /etc/lisarc.bak

knoppix@ttyp0[knoppix]$ sudo kcontrol

When the KDE Control Center opens, click Internet & NetworkLocal Network Browsing, select the LISa Daemon tab, and click "Guided LISa Setup." If your network is already correctly configured, either by Knoppix automatically or by you manually, the guided setup should provide you with all of the correct defaults. Just click Next through all of the options, and then click Apply at the bottom of the screen to save the changes.

With the new settings in place, start the LISa daemon:

knoppix@ttyp0[knoppix]$ sudo /etc/init.d/lisa start

Starting LAN Information Server: lisa.

Now click K MenuHome, type lan://localhost in the location bar, and press Enter. The machines on the network that LISa detects should appear, named according to their IP address, as in Figure 5-1.

Figure 5-1. Networks detected by LISa

Click on a machine to see the different filesharing services it offers (Figure 5-2). Click on any of the folders to access files that the services offering. To access Windows shares, click on the SMB folder.

Figure 5-2. View filesharing services

There are a number of filesharing services LISa supports, including FISH (filesharing over SSH), FTP, NFS, and SMB.