SMB Client for Mac

When you mount the SMB share, it's available to your apps (ie, you don't have to copy it over to/from the Mac). I do the same on Windows as on Mac.

I personally use SFTP more often than SMB. Filezilla is a great cross-platform client.

Linux apps can run on a Mac if it's recompiled and you install all the libraries needed as well. Fortunately, there are several pre-compiled repositories that work similarly to RPM or Aptitude.

Read about and choose from: Fink, Homebrew, MacPorts, for example.

Hello there. I have my mac setup for SMB. I have a file that I would like to access on a windows computer, and I was wondering if there was a client that is Cross-Platform compatible. I know that Finder can do it, but I am wondering of there are any 3rd Party Clients that can do this on Mac and Windows.

Mac OS X has a built in CIFS/SMB client. You can use Finder -> Go -> Connect to Server... -> smb://workgroup;username:password@server.address/sharename

Windows should be able to access volumes that you have enabled via System Preferences -> Sharing -> File Sharing.

Also, can the Mac run Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora, etc) apps?

Not native. Mac OS X is NOT Linux and does not use the same executable file format.

However, many Linux apps can be compiled for Mac OS X, or you can use a package manager to install pre-built open source packages.

And you can run a virtual machine (VMware Fusion, Parallels, VirtualBox) and then install a Linux OS into the virtual machine and run your stuff there.

Also many Linux apps use X11 for their gui display, and you can install XQuartz on Mac OS X then arrange for your Linux DISPLAY environment variable to point back to the Mac (the best approach is to ssh -X or ssh -Y from your Mac to the Linux system and that will automatically redirect your DISPLAY environment variable back to your Mac).

See, I have it enabled. What I need is a client for Windows and Mac. Or just use FTP - how to enable that in 10.9.2???

If you are talking about sftp clients, then if you like terminal commands, you use sftp username@address.of.sftp.server

For a GUI based Mac OS X sftp client, download CyberDuck.

I'm sure Google will find appropriate Windows sftp clients and servers, but as I'm a Mac person, I cannot help you find Windows products.

SMB is one of the most popular networking protocol for modern operation systems. SMB is at the system level of operation systems like Windows, Mac, Linux. It's mostly an open standard so once configured, the operating systems can connect to each others shares and transfer files. Unfortunately, you are going to see that the Mac uses their own version of SMB, called SMBX. Apple used to use the open standard, but they stopped for some reason a few editions of OSX ago. SMBX has major problems and causes OSX to have very poor networking skills. SMBX supports SMB 2, while the rest of the modern operation systems are already on 3.x or higher. 10.8 was still on SMB 1. SMBX has a tough time connecting to and staying connected to SMB shares hosted by Windows Server 2012 or higher servers. SMBX read speeds are pretty fast, but SMBX write speeds are 1/10th of what they should be.

Some solutions are to force SMBX to use SMB 1, there are work arounds on the net. Some people have written apps to replace SMBX with the open source version of SMB, this will probably create a lot of other new problems.

At the end of the day, we are stuck dead in the water until Apple either puts some real effort into SMBX to make it a real SMB client worthy of today's modern operating systems or Apple re-embraces the open standard of SMB. That would be great, because 90% of my issues with OSX are SMB related.

There is a lot of great reading about this all over the web. Good luck with your networking!

SMB/CIFS as it is currently implemented is not open source. It is mostly Microsoft proprietary. Samba is an open source project that has reverse engineered the Microsoft SMB/CIFS implementation.

Samba is now under a GPLv3 license which makes it pretty much unsuitable for Apple to continue using due to its requirements.

CB223 wrote:

Thanks for all the help!!! But I sm asking, how to enable SFTP/FTP on Mavericks?

CB223

Outbound is already enabled.

If you want other computers to be able to access yours via sftp, then enable Remote Login in the Sharing system prefs.

sftp is ftp over secure shell (ssh). You enable ssh by turning on Remote Login.

How to setup SFTP:

Pretty easy!

Go to System Preferences > Sharing, and enable “Remote Login”

Every browser understands ftp:// and sftp:// as UR(L/I) so it has a built-in client, unless you need a more sophisticated client.

A popular Windows client is WinSCP (which also supports FTP and SFTP). PuTTy also has some command-line clients like pscp, etc.

I recommended Filezilla because it's available for Mac, linux and Windows. And it looks and feels the same on all.

Several other good ideas above...