Transfer Files to a Mac on a CIFS Based Domain

Are you finding that is a royal pain in the rear to transfer files between a Macintosh computer and everything else on your Windows or Linux CIFS/SMB based network or workgroup? You are not alone. Not that it is impossible to do, as there are a number of ways to do it, however, it is not as seamless and transparent as it might be between windows or linux systems. As great as they are, sometimes the Macs can be a royal pain in the rear.

Since there are a number of ways to accomplish this, some will be discuss here. Applies to OS X versions relative to Catalina or perhaps newer.

Enable File Sharing on the Mac

You can share a directory on your Mac file system so that it is accessible by other machines using SMB / CIFS. The shared directory will appear as a windows hare.

This is not necessarily a way to use the Mac to access your windows shares, but rather a way to access a directory on the Mac from your other workstations. Tested and verified accessing the Mac share from a Linux workstation using Gigolo with CIFS enabled on the system.

1. Click the Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Sharing
2. check the File Sharing box from the "Service" list. It is recommended you set a logical Computer Name that does NOT contain spaces or special characters as this will appear as the hostname on your LAN.
3. under the "options" (within the same sharing dialog) you can select users that may access the share. It helps of the username and password is identical on the Mac as the other system on the Windows share, although not entirely necessary especially when using handy tools like Gigolo
4. also under "options" you should select SMB (Server Message Block) as this is the compatible protocol for your Windows / SMB / CIFS network.

3rd Party Tool such as muCommander

muCommander is an Orthodox 2 panel file manager for Macintosh. From within muCommander you can establish access to a Windows file server from your Mac even when the file server, such as a NAS device, is running an old version of SMB such as SMB 1.0, which the Mac would otherwise not permit.

Directory Access application

This feature of the Mac allows you the ability to add your Mac to an Active Diretory Domain or traditional NT domain, however, it is not compatible with older versions of SMB such as 1.0, which makes it useless for people that use an older NAS device as their file server.

You may read further on Macintosh on a Windows Active Directory Domain for details.