Smbclient

smbclient is an Open Source networking application that allows non-Microsoft systems to participate in Microsoft Networking as a client. smbclient is usually packaged as part of the samba suite and ships with most linux distributions.

How can this help me

You can see what samba shares are on a Windows computer like that:

$ smbclient -U Administrator -L winbox
Enter Administrator's password:
Domain=[LS3244] OS=[Windows Server (R) 2008 Enterprise 6002 Service Pack 2] Server=[Windows Server (R) 2008 Enterprise 6.0]

        Sharename       Type      Comment
        ---------       ----      -------
        ADMIN$          Disk      Remote Admin
        C$              Disk      Default share
        [...]

History

The various incarnations of Microsoft Windows Networking (CIFS, NetBEUI, etc.) have had a wide variety of bugs and idiosyncracies. Many of these have never actually been fixed, and some are still supported in "compatibility modes" by Microsoft today.

Because the makefiles and CVS configuration of the samba suite were designed to bundle all the programs in the development space into the samba distribution, the smbclient program was inadvertently distributed to end-users without any documentation or explanation. Several users discovered this program, and Tridge was eventually horrified to learn that a large bank had built their payroll system around the use of smbclient.

In order to make the best of the existing situation, smbclient was rewritten to provide some measure of reliability, and the original smbclient was renamed smbtorture]]. Both are still in use by the Samba Team.