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

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

Samba servers act as a gateway between Indiana University's Massive Data Storage Service (MDSS) servers and your workstation, and provide a fast and easily configured way of accessing your MDSS files and folders. See the appropriate section below for instructions on mapping or mounting your MDSS 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 MDSS shares

Windows

The Samba interface allows you to access your MDSS files and folders as if they resided on a drive on your workstation. Before you can access your MDSS 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 MDSS 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 MDSS 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 MDSS space using SMB, the sharing protocol used in Windows. To access your MDSS 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 MDSS folder will be mounted on the desktop shortly.

Linux

To establish file system access to the MDSS 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 MDSS as root, as follows: # mkdir /mdss # mount -t smbfs -o username=netid,krb //smb.mdss.iu.edu/netid /mdss

  If the above example returns a "krb5_get_credentials failed" error message, try the following instead:

  # mount -t smbfs -o username=netid@ADS.IU.EDU,krb //smb.mdss.iu.edu/netid /mdss
• If you want to mount this such that it maps to a local UID (for example, UID 500) correctly, you may want to do something like this: # mount -t smbfs -o uid=500,username=netid,krb //smb.mdss.iu.edu/netid /mdss
• If you do not have root access, you can use the following commands: # mkdir ~mdss # smbmount //smb.mdss.iu.edu/netid ~/mdss -o username=netid,krb

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

Note that you will need a Kerberos-enabled Samba client on your Linux computer. This is the default on many distributions like Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Debian. If the mount command returns "No kerberos support compiled in", you may need to install Samba manually or consult your distribution's documentation to install a Kerberos-enabled Samba.

Other MDSS shares

MDSS 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.
  
  
• medium: This maps to COS 2, which is for medium-sized files.
  
  
• large: This maps to COS 3, which is for large files.
  
  
• hpss-home: This maps to the top-level directory in MDSS, 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.