Linux and Unix smbclient command

Note that the server name required is NOT necessarily the IP (DNS) host name of the server ! The name required is a NetBIOS server name, which may or may not be the same as the IP hostname of the machine running the server.

The server name is looked up according to either the -R parameter to smbclient or using the name resolve order parameter in the smb.conf(5) file, allowing an administrator to change the order and methods by which server names are looked up.

There is no default password. If no password is supplied on the command line (either by using this parameter or adding a password to the -U option (see below)) and the -N option is not specified, the client will prompt for a password, even if the desired service does not require one. (If no password is required, press ENTER to provide a null password.)

Note: Some servers (including OS/2 and Windows for Workgroups) insist on an uppercase password. Lowercase or mixed case passwords may be rejected by these servers.

Be cautious about including passwords in scripts.

The options are :"lmhosts", "host", "wins" and "bcast". They cause names to be resolved as follows:

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lmhosts: Lookup an IP address in the Samba lmhosts file. If the line in lmhosts has no name type attached to the NetBIOS name (see the lmhosts for details) then any name type matches for lookup.

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host: Do a standard host name to IP address resolution, using the system /etc/hosts , NIS, or DNS lookups. This method of name resolution is operating system dependent, for instance on IRIX or Solaris this may be controlled by the /etc/nsswitch.conf file). Note that this method is only used if the NetBIOS name type being
queried is the 0x20 (server) name type, otherwise it is ignored.

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wins: Query a name with the IP address listed in the wins server parameter. If no WINS server has been specified this method will be ignored.

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bcast: Do a broadcast on each of the known local interfaces listed in the interfaces parameter. This is the least reliable of the name resolution methods as it depends on the target host being on a locally connected subnet.

If this parameter is not set then the name resolve order defined in the smb.conf file parameter (name resolve order) will be used.

The default order is lmhosts, host, wins, bcast and without this parameter or any entry in the name resolve order parameter of the smb.conf file the name resolution methods will be attempted in this order.

If the receiving computer is running WinPopup the user will receive the message and probably a beep. If they are not running WinPopup the message will be lost, and no error message will occur.

The message is also automatically truncated if the message is over 1600 bytes, as this is the limit of the protocol.

One useful trick is to cat the message through smbclient. For example:

cat mymessage.txt | smbclient -M FRED
will send the message in the file mymessage.txt to the machine FRED.

You may also find the -U and -I options useful, as they allow you to control the FROM and TO parts of the message.

See the message command parameter in the smb.conf for a description of how to handle incoming WinPopup messages in Samba.

Note: Copy WinPopup into the startup group on your WfWg PCs if you want them to always be able to receive messages.

Normally the client would attempt to locate a named SMB/CIFS server by looking it up via the NetBIOS name resolution mechanism described above in the name resolve order parameter above. Using this parameter will force the client to assume that the server is on the machine with the specified IP address and the NetBIOS name component of the resource being connected to will be ignored.

There is no default for this parameter. If not supplied, it will be determined automatically by the client as described above.

By default, the client writes messages to standard output - typically the user's tty.

The terminal codes include CWsjis, CWeuc, CWjis7, CWjis8, CWjunet, CWhex, CWcap. This is not a complete list, check the Samba source code for the complete list.

The higher this value, the more detail will be logged to the log files about the activities of the server. At level 0, only critical errors and serious warnings will be logged. Level 1 is a reasonable level for day-to-day running - it generates a small amount of information about operations carried out.

Levels above 1 will generate considerable amounts of log data, and should only be used when investigating a problem. Levels above 3 are designed for use only by developers and generate HUGE amounts of log data, most of which is extremely cryptic.

Note that specifying this parameter here will override the

parameter in the smb.conf file.

Unless a password is specified on the command line or this parameter is specified, the client will request a password.

If %password is not specified, the user will be prompted. The client will first check the USER environment variable, then the LOGNAME variable and if either exists, the string is uppercased. If these environmental variables are not found, the username GUEST is used.

A third option is to use a credentials file which contains the plaintext of the username and password. This option is mainly provided for scripts where the admin does not wish to pass the credentials on the command line or via environment variables. If this method is used, make certain that the permissions on the file restrict access from unwanted users. See the -A for more details.

Be cautious about including passwords in scripts. Also, on many systems the command line of a running process may be seen via the ps command. To be safe always allow rpcclient to prompt for a password and type it in directly.

parameter in the smb.conf file. However, a command line setting will take precedence over settings in smb.conf.

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c - Create a tar file on UNIX. Must be followed by the name of a tar file, tape device or "-" for standard output. If using standard output you must turn the log level to its lowest value -d0 to avoid corrupting your tar file. This flag is mutually exclusive with the x flag.

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x - Extract (restore) a local tar file back to a share. Unless the -D option is given, the tar files will be restored from the top level of the share. Must be followed by the name of the tar file, device or "-" for standard input. Mutually exclusive with the c flag. Restored files have their creation times (mtime) set to the date saved in the tar file. Directories currently do not get their creation dates restored properly.

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I - Include files and directories. Is the default behavior when filenames are specified above. Causes files to be included in an extract or create (and therefore everything else to be excluded). See example below. Filename globbing works in one of two ways. See r below.

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X - Exclude files and directories. Causes files to be excluded from an extract or create. See example below. Filename globbing works in one of two ways now. See r below.

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F - File containing a list of files and directories. The F causes the name following the tarfile to create to be read as a filename that contains a list of files and directories to be included in an extract or create (and therefore everything else to be excluded). See example below. Filename globbing works in one of two ways. See r below.

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b - Blocksize. Must be followed by a valid (greater than zero) blocksize. Causes tar file to be written out in blocksize*TBLOCK (usually 512 byte) blocks.

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g - Incremental. Only back up files that have the archive bit set. Useful only with the c flag.

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q - Quiet. Keeps tar from printing diagnostics as it works. This is the same as tarmode quiet.

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r - Regular expression include or exclude. Uses regular expression matching for excluding or excluding files if compiled with HAVE_REGEX_H. However this mode can be very slow. If not compiled with HAVE_REGEX_H, does a limited wildcard match on '*' and '?'.

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N - Newer than. Must be followed by the name of a file whose date is compared against files found on the share during a create. Only files newer than the file specified are backed up to the tar file. Useful only with the c flag.

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a - Set archive bit. Causes the archive bit to be reset when a file is backed up. Useful with the g and c flags.

Tar Long File Names

smbclient's tar option now supports long file names both on backup and restore. However, the full path name of the file must be less than 1024 bytes. Also, when a tar archive is created, smbclient's tar option places all files in the archive with relative names, not absolute names.

Tar Filenames

All file names can be given as DOS path names (with '\' as the component separator) or as UNIX path names (with '/' as the component separator).

Examples

Restore from tar file backup.tar into myshare on mypc (no password on share).

smbclient //mypc/yshare "" -N -Tx backup.tar

Restore everything except users/docs

smbclient //mypc/myshare "" -N -TXx backup.tar users/docs

Create a tar file of the files beneath
users/docs.

smbclient //mypc/myshare "" -N -Tc backup.tar users/docs

Create the same tar file as above, but now use a DOS path name.

smbclient //mypc/myshare "" -N -tc backup.tar users\docs

Create a tar file of the files listed in the file tarlist.

smbclient //mypc/myshare "" -N -TcF backup.tar tarlist

Create a tar file of all the files and directories in the share.

smbclient //mypc/myshare "" -N -Tc backup.tar *

-N is implied by -c.

This is particularly useful in scripts and for printing stdin to the server, e.g. -c 'print -'.