libsmbclient - Man Page

Browser URL: smb://[[[domain:]user[:password@]]server[/share[/path[/file]]]] [?options]

This tool is part of the samba(7) suite​.

libsmbclient is a library toolset that permits applications to manipulate CIFS/SMB network resources using many of the standards POSIX functions available for manipulating local UNIX/Linux files​. It permits much more than just browsing, files can be opened and read or written, permissions changed, file times modified, attributes and ACL's can be manipulated, and so on​. Of course, its functionality includes all the capabilities commonly called browsing​.

libsmbclient can not be used directly from the command line, instead it provides an extension of the capabilities of tools such as file managers and browsers​. This man page describes the configuration options for this tool so that the user may obtain greatest utility of use​.

What the URLs mean:

smb://

Shows all workgroups or domains that are visible in the network​. The behavior matches that of the Microsoft Windows Explorer​.

The method of locating the list of workgroups (domains also) varies depending on the setting of the context variable (context->options​.browse_max_lmb_count)​. It is the responsibility of the application that calls this library to set this to a sensible value​. This is a compile-time option​. This value determines the maximum number of local master browsers to query for the list of workgroups​. In order to ensure that the list is complete for those present on the network, all master browsers must be queried​. If there are a large number of workgroups on the network, the time spent querying will be significant​. For small networks (just a few workgroups), it is suggested to set this value to 0, instructing libsmbclient to query all local master browsers​. In an environment that has many workgroups a more reasonable setting may be around 3​.

smb://name/

This command causes libsmbclient to perform a name look-up​. If the NAME<1D> or NAME<1B> exists (workgroup name), libsmbclient will list all servers in the workgroup (or domain)​. Otherwise, a name look-up for the NAME<20> (machine name) will be performed, and the list of shared resources on the server will be displayed​.

When libsmbclient is invoked by an application it searches for a directory called ​.smb in the $HOME directory that is specified in the users shell environment​. It then searches for a file called smb​.conf which, if present, will fully over-ride the system /etc/samba/smb​.conf file​. If instead libsmbclient finds a file called ~/​.smb/smb​.conf​.append, it will read the system /etc/samba/smb​.conf and then append the contents of the ~/​.smb/smb​.conf​.append to it​.

libsmbclient will check the users shell environment for the USER parameter and will use its value when if the user parameter was not included in the URL​.

Watch this space for future updates​.

This man page is part of version 4​.25​.0 of the Samba suite​.

The original Samba software and related utilities were created by Andrew Tridgell​. Samba is now developed by the Samba Team as an Open Source project similar to the way the Linux kernel is developed​.

The libsmbclient manpage page was written by John H Terpstra​.