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, simply 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:

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(5) 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 pipe the message through smbclient. For example: smbclient -M FRED < mymessage.txt 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(5) 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 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 log level 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 a password is specified on the command line and this option is also defined the password on the command line will be silently ignored and no password will be used.

username = <value>
password = <value>
domain   = <value>

Make certain that the permissions on the file restrict access from unwanted users.

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.

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/myshare "" -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\edocs

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 *

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

If no directory name is specified, the current working directory on the server will be reported.

If no directory name is specified, the name of the current working directory on the local machine will be reported.

When lowercasing is toggled ON, local filenames are converted to lowercase when using the get and mget commands. This is often useful when copying (say) MSDOS files from a server, because lowercase filenames are the norm on UNIX systems.

The masks specified to the mget and mput commands act as filters for directories rather than files when recursion is toggled ON.

The mask specified with the mask command is necessary to filter files within those directories. For example, if the mask specified in an mget command is "source*" and the mask specified with the mask command is "*.c" and recursion is toggled ON, the mget command will retrieve all files matching "*.c" in all directories below and including all directories matching "source*" in the current working directory.

Note that the value for mask defaults to blank (equivalent to "*") and remains so until the mask command is used to change it. It retains the most recently specified value indefinitely. To avoid unexpected results it would be wise to change the value of mask back to "*" after using the mget or mput commands.

Note that mask is interpreted differently during recursive operation and non-recursive operation - refer to the recurse and mask commands for more information. Note that all transfers in smbclient are binary. See also the lowercase command.

Note that mask is interpreted differently during recursive operation and non-recursive operation - refer to the recurse and mask commands for more information. Note that all transfers in smbclient are binary.

This command never ends, it waits for event indefinitely.

When toggled ON, the user will be prompted to confirm the transfer of each file during these commands. When toggled OFF, all specified files will be transferred without prompting.

When toggled ON, these commands will process all directories in the source directory (i.e., the directory they are copying from ) and will recurse into any that match the mask specified to the command. Only files that match the mask specified using the mask command will be retrieved. See also the mask command.

When recursion is toggled OFF, only files from the current working directory on the source machine that match the mask specified to the mget or mput commands will be copied, and any mask specified using the mask command will be ignored.

setmode myfile +r

would make myfile read only.

Incremental mode (default off). When off (using full) tar will back up everything regardless of the archive bit setting. When on (using inc), tar will only back up files with the archive bit set.

Reset mode (default off). When on (using reset), tar will remove the archive bit on all files it backs up (implies read/write share). Use noreset to turn off.

System mode (default on). When off, tar will not backup system files. Use nosystem to turn off.

Hidden mode (default on). When off, tar will not backup hidden files. Use nohidden to turn off.