Sharing Files between VMware and Windows

If you happen to be running Linux in VMware on Windows, this article describes how you can use CIFS on Linux to access shared files on the host Windows system (alternatively, you could use VMware to share folders on the host with the virtual system). CIFS is the Common Internet File System, which is a network file system compatible with Windows.

First, on the Windows system, you must share any directory that you want the Linux system to have access to.
Then, on Linux, you can verify the directory is shared using the following command. This will list the services that are available on a Windows system. (Just press return at the password prompt if there is no password.)

$ /usr/bin/smbclient -L WindowsHostName

Or, you can use the following command to access the Windows directory in a manner similar to using FTP.

$ /usr/bin/smbclient '\\WindowsHostName\directoryName'

smb> ls

...

smb> quit

To mount the directory on Linux:

$ mkdir /windows/directoryName

$ mount -t cifs -o password="" '\\WindowsHostName\directoryName' \

/windows/directoryName

Rather than executing the mount command everytime you want to access the directory, you can add an entry in the /etc/fstab file, so the directory will be mounted when the Linux system is booted.

\\WindowsHostName\directoryName /windows/directoryName cifs \

uid=userName,password=password 0 0