How
to Mount Rutgers Microsoft or Samba Fileserver Securely from Home for MacOS X
By Hanz Makmur -
LCSR Computing Facility Rutgers University
Last Modified: Feb 4, 2003
Last Modified: June 4, 2009 - Address issues with MacOS X Leopard
Scenario:
You
have files sitting on Microsoft fileserver or Samba fileserver that can be
accessed only from inside Rutgers. You want to be able to mount this fileserver
shares securely on your home computer via your DSL or Cable modem
service.
Solution:
MacOS
X client versions starting from 10.1 include a client for Windows networks. As
a result, this is can easily be
done by setting up a secure encrypted tunnel via your unix account on a machine such as eden.rutgers.edu
or rci.rutgers.edu and use it as a router to fileserver whose volume you
would like to mount. The method we will
be using is known as local port forwarding.
Client for WindowsTuneling
Setup for home computer running MacOS X
To
setup your MacOS X computer to access windows fileserver at Rutgers, do the following:
- Set up a Secure Tunnel
to Your Fileserver
- Mount the Fileserver securely.
- Unmounting Volume and
Closing the Tunnel
1. Set up a
Secure Tunnel to Your Rutgers Samba or Microsoft Fileserver
First we have to establish a tunnel to the Rutgers
fileserver that we would like to access. Use the following steps to setup the
tunnel:
a.
In MacOS X, run the terminal program by double clicking on
it. The Terminal program is located in Applications/Utilities/Terminal
Figure 1.
b. A
terminal window will open. In the prompt type the following line:
% su
and you will be asked for root password.
Enter the password. This is required because you are opening privilege port
(ports below port 1024.) Next type the following at the prompt to establish a secure
tunnel for the fileserver.
% /usr/bin/ssh -N -L 139:jetli.rutgers.edu:139 username@eden.rutgers.edu
and you will be ask for a password. Enter your
eden.rutgers.edu password here. On a successful tunnel, nothing will happen on
the screen as if the connection is waiting for something. This is the correct
behavior.
Details of options
to the above ssh command:
|
-N |
tells ssh to only handle tunnel, you do not want a shell
on this host |
|
-L |
specifies the kind of tunnel (Local port forwarding) |
|
139 |
the local port we will use to connect |
|
jetli.rutgers.edu |
The fileserver we would like to mount |
|
139 |
the server port where the service is running |
|
Username |
the username you want to connect as. |
|
eden.rutgers.edu |
the ssh server you will use as the gateway to the
service |
- Now you are ready to
mount the fileserver volume from your MacOS X machine.
2. Mount the Microsoft or Samba Fileserver Securely.
Now that a
secure tunnel have been established between your home MacOS X computer and the
Rutgers fileserver via eden.rutgers.edu,
we can securely mount a Rutgers restricted
fileserver onto the desktop of your home computer. Just like being in your
office, to mount a fileserver (in this
example: JETLI.RUTGERS.EDU), you must
have an account on the fileserver. Do the following to mount the fileserver
securely:
a.
Go to the Finder
by clicking on the desktop . Next click the GO menu and select Connect
to Server as shown in Figure 2. A Connect to server window will open as
shown in Figure 3.
b. In
the Connect to Server window, as shown in Figure 2, enter the following in the
address field
smb://127.0.0.1/username or smb://127.0.0.1/sharename. In this
example we enter: smb://127.0.0.1/makmur
where makmur is the sharename on the server.
Figure 2.
c. Click the Connect button to connect to the fileserver. An authentication window will open and ask you to enter Workgroup/Domain, Username and Password to access the fileserver as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3.
d. After you enter the required authentication information above, click the OK button.
e. On a successful authentication, you will the fileserver share mounted on your computer’s desktop as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4.
3.
Unmounting Volume and Closing the Tunnel
To unmount the mounted network volume shown in Figure 4, click on the icon of
the mounted volume and select Eject from the File menu. To remove
the tunnel, press control-c on the session window as shown in figure 1
and steps 1a above.
This completes the instruction on How to Mount Rutgers Microsoft or Samba Fileserver Securely from Home for MacOS X. If you have any questions, please contact HelpDesk