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Asked: 2026-05-10T14:34:51+00:00

First off if you’re unaware, samba or smb == Windows file sharing, \\computer\share etc.

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First off if you’re unaware, samba or smb == Windows file sharing, \\computer\share etc.

I have a bunch of different files on a bunch of different computers. It’s mostly media and there is quite a bit of it. I’m looking into various ways of consolidating this into something more manageable.

Currently there are a few options I’m looking at, the most insane of which is some kind of samba share indexer that would generate a list of things shared on the various samba servers I tell it about and upload them to a website which could then be searched and browsed.

It’s a cheap solution, OK?

Ignoring the fact that the idea is obviously a couple of methods short of a class, do you chaps know of any way to link to samba file shares in html in a cross-browser way? In windows one does \\computer\share, in linux one does smb://computer/share, neither of which work afaik from browsers that aren’t also used as file managers (e.g. any browser that isn’t Internet Explorer).

Some Clarifications

  • The computers used to access this website are a mixture of WIndows (XP) and Linux (Ubuntu) with a mixture of browsers (Opera and Firefox).
  • In linux entering smb://computer/share only seems to work in Nautilus (and presumably Konqueror / Dolphin for you KDE3.5/4 people). It doesn’t work in Firefox or Opera (Firefox does nothing, Opera complains the URL is invalid).
  • I don’t have a Windows box handy atm so I’m unsure if \\computer\share works in anything apart from IE (e.g. Firefox / Opera).
  • If you have a better idea for consolidating a bunch of random samba shares (it certainly can’t get much worse than mine ;-)) it’s worth knowing that there is no guarantee that any of the servers I would be wanting to index / consolidate would be up at any particular moment. Moreover, I wouldn’t want the knowledge of what they have shared lost or hidden just because they weren’t available. I would want to know that they share ‘foo’ but they are currently down.
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1 Answer

  1. Hmm, protocol handlers look interesting.

    As Mark said, in Windows protocol handlers can be dealt with at the OS level

    Protocol handlers can also be done at the browser level (which is preferred, as it is cross platform and doesn’t involve installing anything).

    Summary of how it works in Firefox
    Summary of how it works in Opera

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