# ownCloud 9.0 Server Administration Manual

# SMB/CIFS

ownCloud can connect to Windows file servers or other SMB-compatible servers with the SMB/CIFS backend.

Note

The SMB/CIFS backend requires `smbclient` to be installed on the ownCloud server. This should be included in any Linux distribution.

You need the following information:

- Folder name for your local mountpoint.
- Host: The URL of the Samba server.
- Username: The username or domain/username used to login to the Samba server.
- Password: the password to login to the Samba server.
- Share: The share on the Samba server to mount.
- Remote Subfolder: The remote subfolder inside the Samba share to mount (optional, defaults to /). To assign the ownCloud logon username automatically to the subfolder, use `$user` instead of a particular subfolder name.
- And finally, the ownCloud users and groups who get access to the share.

Optionally, you can specify a `Domain`. This is useful in cases where the SMB server requires a domain and a username, and an advanced authentication mechanism like session credentials is used so that the username cannot be modified. This is concatenated with the username, so the backend gets `domain\username`

Note

For improved reliability and performance, we recommended installing `libsmbclient-php`, a native PHP module for connecting to SMB servers. It is available as `php5-libsmbclient` in the ownCloud OBS repositories

See Configuring External Storage (GUI) for additional mount options and information.

See External Storage Authentication mechanisms for more information on authentication schemes.