At IU, how do I map or mount my SDA account to my workstation?

Note: For information about other methods of accessing the SDA, see At IU, how do I access the SDA?

Samba servers act as a gateway between Indiana University's Scholarly Data Archive (SDA) servers and your workstation, and provide a fast and easily configured way of accessing your SDA files and folders. See the appropriate section below for instructions on mapping or mounting your SDA account to your workstation.

Note: If you are connecting from outside the IU network, your computer must be configured to use VPN. For help, see The basics of VPN at IU.

On this page:

• Windows
• Mac OS X
• Linux
• Other SDA shares

Windows

Note: If you are running a Windows computer that is not joined to Indiana University's ADS domain, in order to connect to RFS via the Samba interface you may need to run a tool that disables LM/NTLMv1. See What is the tool that disables LM/NTLMv1, and where can I get it?

The Samba interface allows you to access your SDA files and folders as if they resided on a drive on your workstation. Before you can access your SDA folder directly, you need to configure your computer as follows:

1. Right-click Computer or My Computer and select Map Network Drive... .
   
   
2. In the "Folder:" field, type the path for your SDA account: \\smb.mdss.iu.edu\username

   Replace username with your username and click Finish.

3. You will be prompted to enter a username and password. Your SDA folder will be mapped to a drive on the workstation.

Mac OS X

You need Mac OS X 10.1 or later to mount your SDA space using SMB, the sharing protocol used in Windows. To access your SDA account using Samba:

1. In the Finder, from the Go menu, select Connect to Server... .
   
   
2. In the Connect to Server window, in the "Address:" field, type: smb://smb.mdss.iu.edu/username

   Replace username with your username. Click Connect.

3. You will be asked to authenticate. Type your username and password in the appropriate boxes. In Mac OS X 10.4 and earlier, in the "Workgroup/Domain" box, type ADS .
   
   
4. Click OK. Your SDA folder will be mounted on the desktop shortly.

Linux

To establish file system access to the SDA from Linux via Samba, use one of the following methods (replace netid with your IU Network ID; you will be prompted for your password):

• Mount SDA as root on the local machine, as follows: # mkdir /mdss # mount.cifs //smb.mdss.iu.edu/netid /mdss -o user="netid",uid="localuserid",sec=ntlmv2,domain=ads

  Note that the localuserid is a username or UID of a non-root user on the machine that will need permission to view the SDA account. The uid=localuserid may be omitted if the local account has the same UID as your Network ID. Another option, gid=localgid will likewise map the SDA group ID to a group ID on your machine.

• Once you are finished, you can disconnect using the following command: # umount /mdss
• If you do not have local root access, you can use the following commands: > mkdir ~/mdss > mount.cifs //smb.mdss.iu.edu/netid ~/mdss -o user="netid",uid="localuserid",sec=ntlmv2,domain=ads

  If mount.cifs does not work without root access, contact your system administrator.

• Once you are finished with a user-mounted connection, you can disconnect using the following command: > umount.cifs ~/mdss

Other SDA shares

SDA serves out several Samba/CIFS shares to control the class of service (COS) into which data is uploaded and to provide the ability to navigate to other users' shared folders. To use any of the following, substitute the name of the share for your username in the examples above:

• small: This maps to COS 1, which is for small files (up to 4 MB).
  
  
• medium: This maps to COS 2, which is for medium-sized files (from 4 MB to 64 MB).
  
  
• large: This maps to COS 3, which is for large files (from 64 MB to 1 TB).
  
  
• hpss-home: This maps to the top-level directory in SDA, where you can traverse the directory tree to the home directory of another user. For example, the username username would be under directory u, then s, and then username. Note that you won't be able to view the files unless the user has set permissions for you to do so.