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Mounting network drives

What?

• To use the central disk space which is offered, you must connect to the network drives to which you have access. You need to "mount" your network drives.
• When a network drive is mounted, you will see the drive letter and/or disk name associated with the disk space in the (Windows) Explorer or (Mac) Finder. You can then open files or save them on the network drive.
• A number of network drives are mounted automatically on Athena and on all (Windows) PCs installed using the rollout and joined to the Active Directory domain. Please consult the table below.
• You will have to add NEW network drives.

Tip: first check if your network drives are mounted automatically.

Mount how?

• Via Athena: no VPN required. See: Network drives via Athena.
  
  
• Locally on your PC, Mac, Linux system. You can mount drives on every Windows computer, every Mac with MacOS X or higher and every computer that can mount network drives via the SMB protocol.
  
  Below you find instructions for different operating systems to mount locally.

Mounting on a Windows device

When you mount a network drive, you assign a drive letter to the (server path of the) network drive. The letters A, B, C, G, H, S, W, X, Y and Z cannot be used.

A number of drive letters are reserved.

 \\files.ugent.be\login name

\\files.ugent.be\login name\shares

\\files.ugent.be\login name\www\users

Windows 8 & 10

Make sure the computer is connected correctly to the UGentNet. From outside the UGent, this means that you first need to set up a VPN-connection

1. Click on "Desktop".
2. Click on the Windows button + E.
3. Click on "Computer".
4. Click on "Map Network Drive".
5. In the dialogue box that appears, next to Path, type (for example):
   

   \\files.ugent.be\<login name>

6. If you are using a computer that is not installed using the UGent rollout select 'Connect using different credentials'.
7. You also need to add UGent\ to your credentials before your username.
   For example UGent\jpeeters
8. Select "Reconnect at sign-in" if is not selected.
9. Click on "Finish".

Windows 7

Make sure the computer is connected correctly to the UGentNet. From outside the UGent, this means that you first need to set up a VPN-connection

1. Right click on "Start".
2. Choose "Open Windows Desktop".
3. Click on "Tools" in the menu.
4. Click on "Map Network Drive".
5. Type for 'Folder: (for example) ' \\files.ugent.be\<login name> and click on 'OK'.
6. In the dialogue box that appears, next to Path, type (for example):
   

   \\files.ugent.be\<login name>

7. If you are using a computer that is not installed using the UGent rollout select 'Connect using different credentials'.
8. You also need to add UGent\ to your credentials before your username.
   For example UGent\jpeeters
9. Select "Reconnect at sign-in" if is not selected.
10. Click on "Finish".

On a Mac (MacOS X or higher)

Make sure the computer is connected correctly to the UGentNet. From outside the UGent, this means that you first need to set up a VPN-connection

• Mac OS X does not use a drive letter but a drive name to refer to a mounted network drive.

Use this method to reach your network drives:
Open Finder and click on "Go" > "Connect to server"

smb://UGENT\<loginname>@files.ugent.be/<loginname>

On a Linux system

Make sure the computer is connected correctly to the UGentNet. From outside the UGent, this means that you first need to set up a VPN-connection

The shares are running samba version 3. This can cause issues on some distributions.
Keep the following in mind:

• smbclient

  If you use smbclient you need to use the flag '-m smb2'.
  Eg.: smbclient -U UGENT\username //files.ugent.be/username -m smb2

• cifs mounts

  For cifs mounts (eg. in /etc/fstab) you need to specify vers=2.02 (webshares) or vers=3.0 (shares).
  Attention: for DFS links cifs-utils and keyutils need to be installed.
  
  Eg. share: //files.ugent.be/<ugent_username>/shares/<sharename> /mnt/<sharename> cifs domain=UGENT,username=<ugent_username>,password=<ugent_password>,vers=3.0,sec=ntlmv2i 0 0
  Eg. webshare: //webhost.ugent.be/_<websharename> /mnt/<websharename> cifs domain=UGENT,username=<ugent_username>,password=<ugent_password>,vers=2.02 0 0
• Linux kernels older than 4.17 contain a bug that causes issues with mounting samba 3 shares.
  If you are experiencing problems, please verify that you are using a recent kernel.

Mount on Ubuntu

Make sure the computer is connected correctly to the UGentNet. From outside the UGent, this means that you first need to set up a VPN-connection.

• Add the following to the samba client configuration file (/etc/samba/smb.conf):

  [global]
  
  client min protocol = SMB2_02
  ; default is 'CORE' (MS-DOS era)
  
  client max protocol = SMB3
  ; default was 'NT1' (aka CIFS) until Samba v4.6
  ; finally includes SMB3 as of Samba v4.7
      

• Select in 'Files' - 'Connect to Server'.
• Fill out:
  • Server adres: 'smb://<loginname>@files.ugent.be/<loginname>'
    or try: 'smb://UGENT\<loginname>@files.ugent.be/<loginname>'
    UGENT in capital letters!
  • Click 'Connect'
  • Enter your UGent password.

Remarks

• Students who sign on to a DICT workstation (read: a computer controlled by DICT, e.g. in the faculty computer rooms), will automatically obtain the drive mapping:
  • H: the personal directory on the fileserver for students
• On a Windows system no distinction is made between lowercase and uppercase in filenames. On a Unix server however this distinction is made. As a consequence you have to be aware of the fact that you have to be careful when creating files on a pc and respect the use of lowercase and uppercase, although a pc doesn't make this distinction. To avoid problems, see to it that you always use unique filenames. So, never create two files, one by the name File.Txt and the other by the name file.txt, because that will generate problems.