Difference between revisions of "Remote Access for Z Drives"

Revision as of 21:16, 14 April 2020

As noted here, all faculty, staff, and students have a network storage share allocated for their CS account. These drives are seamlessly integrated on Computer Science desktops and servers, but to access them at home some extra steps must be taken.

Windows

1. Connect to the CS VPN. Instructions on doing so can be found here.
2. Open Windows File Explorer either by right clicking the “Start” button and selecting “File Explorer” or by pressing ⊞WIN + E
3. Right click “This PC” and select “Map network drive…”

   

   
   

4. Type the network path (folder) of your drive, select “Connect using different credentials,” and click “Finish.” If you don’t know the network path of your drive, see the table below. Be sure to replace “username” with your CS username:

   

   
   

5. Enter your CS account credentials with the username prepended by “cs\” and click “OK”

   

   
   

6. Your Z drive should now be connected. Note that it will not be available if you disconnect from the VPN.

   

   
   

Linux

SSHFS

SSHFS is a filesystem client that uses SFTP over SSH to securely provide file access. Because of SSH's existing security, using SSHFS does not require our VPN if our public Linux servers are used as the host.

1. Install sshfs from your distribution's package manager
2. Create a directory to mount the share over:

   $ mkdir ~/zdrive

3. Mount the share; rather than use a network path, SSHFS uses a server followed by the directory's path on that server. For example:

   $ sshfs $YOUR_USERNAME@linux.cs.odu.edu:/home/$YOUR_USERNAME ~/zdrive

   Be sure to replace $YOUR_USERNAME.

   
   

4. To unmount the share:

   $ fusermount -u ~/zdrive

CIFS

Note that this method will require super user privileges. If you are not a privileged user, see SSHFS above.

1. Connect to the CS VPN. Instructions on doing so can be found here.
2. Install the cifs-utils package from your distribution's package manager
3. Create a directory to mount the share over:

   $ sudo mkdir /media/zdrive

4. Mount the share using your network path from the table below. For example:

   $ sudo mount -t cifs -o username=$YOUR_USERNAME,uid=$YOUR_UID //cifs-dgs.cs.odu.edu/Undergrad/username /media/zdrive

   Be sure to replace $YOUR_USERNAME and $YOUR_UID.

   
   

5. To unmount the share:

   $ sudo umount /media/zdrive

MacOS

1. Connect to the CS VPN. Instructions on doing so can be found here.
2. From the Go menu/ Mac OS X Finder, select "Connect to Server"
3. Type in your unix network path from the table below prepended by smb:. For example:

   $ smb://cifs-dgs.cs.odu.edu/Undergrad/$YOUR_USERNAME

   Be sure to replace $YOUR_USERNAME.

Network paths

Be sure to replace "username" with your computer science username.