VShell: Accessing remote shares when connected via ssh

[justin_g]

I've been using cygwin's sshd on a few Windows 2003 TS machines so I can ssh to them from Unix machines. The problem I'm running into is that once connected to the Windows machines, I have trouble accessing remote file shares (\\server\share) in that shell. Sometimes I can issue a

net use z: \\server\share /user:username@domain

and then access the share either through the drive letter or with the UNC path. Sometimes I can't. It seems to vary from machine to machine, and day to day. Is this something that works properly in VShell? If so I should easily be able to get justification for buying a few licenses.

[rriley]

Hi justin_g,

I just responded to the e-mail message you sent to our support team, but figured I'd follow up here as well.

Can you tell us what authentication method or methods are being used to initiate the connection to your SSH server?

[justin_g]

password and public-key, with emphasis on public-key for automated jobs.

[rriley]

Does access to the network shares seem to work better with one authentication protocol over the other?

Also, are domain accounts being used, or are they local for each machine in your environment?

I ask because the Windows operating system's authentication structure is quite dependent on the existence of a password.

With a local account, VShell can fully impersonate a local user, including a complete set of credentials because VShell is running on the machine as SYSTEM. This reliance on a password can cause problems for domain users wishing to access network shares, though.

That said, the current release of VShell (when running on a Windows 2003 machine with Active Directory) does include an option called "Use Kerberos Protocol Transition" which can be used to provide authentication credentials for accessing network resources.

More information on Kerberos Protocol Transition can be found on this page of our website.

Might this do the trick in your environment?

[justin_g]

I haven't noticed any difference betwwen password vs public-key. We're trying to use domain accounts so we don't have keep tabs on all the machines with a local account to change passwords on to keep pace with our IT security policies.

I'll look into the kerberos note.

[rriley]

Great, please do let us know if any questions come up during your testing.

[justin_g]

I don't have any access or control over the domain controller or the file server we're trying to access (a Net Apps filer), so I've forwarded the doc to our IT staff to evaluate.