Network Resource Access from Terminal Session

The command for working with network shares in Windows console is net use. When John Brown from our earlier example logs on to his company's SSH jump server using password authentication, the output of net use will look as follows:

C:\Users\johnb>net use
New connections will be remembered.


Status       Local     Remote                    Network

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OK           N:        \\server1\share1          Microsoft Windows Network
The command completed successfully.

Now he can access the data on this disk:

C:\Users\johnb>N:

N:\>dir
 Volume in drive N is share1
 Volume Serial Number is 1D01-2B83

 Directory of N:\

31.03.2009  14:56    <DIR>          johns_treasure
02.04.2009  10:15                 8 johns_test.txt
12.05.2009  16:22             2 315 important_data.txt
17.06.2009  12:46            13 061 important.log

However, when he chooses to log on to the same server using the public-key authentication method, his experience may be as follows:

C:\Users\johnb>net use
New connections will be remembered.


Status       Local     Remote                    Network

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unavailable  N:        \\server1\share1          Microsoft Windows Network
The command completed successfully.

Now his network drive is completely unavailable:

C:\Users\johnb>N:
The system cannot find the drive specified.

Other times using the public-key authentication he will get the drive letter assigned:

C:\Users\johnb>net use
New connections will be remembered.


Status       Local     Remote                    Network

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OK           N:        \\server1\share1          Microsoft Windows Network
The command completed successfully.


C:\Users\johnb>N:

His files are still inaccessible, though:

N:\>dir
 Volume in drive N is share1
 Volume Serial Number is 1D01-2B83

 Directory of N:\

File Not Found

Tectia SSH Server attempts to restore all of the user's persistent network connections. This is done just before starting the interactive terminal session's prompt. The operation will succeed if the user provided credentials to his Windows user account. It also succeeds if all of the following is true (see Virtual Folders Defined on Windows Network Shared Folders Are Not Available on Tectia Server on Windows):

If Tectia SSH Server is running on Windows Server 2003 or newer.
The computer where Tectia SSH Server is running is a member of 2003 Windows domain.
The user account johnb is a domain account in the same domain (or other domain with bi-directional trust).
The share being accessed is on a computer in the same domain and constrained delegation of credentials has been set up for this share on the domain controller.

However, even if the restoration of network connections failed as illustrated above, John can still try to re-connect to the drive manually since he is using the terminal session interactively. This time Windows OS will ask him to provide the user credentials of the server he is trying to access, after which John can use his files freely:

C:\Users\johnb>net use
New connections will be remembered.


Status       Local     Remote                    Network

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unavailable  N:        \\server1\share1          Microsoft Windows Network
The command completed successfully.


C:\Users\johnb>N:
The system cannot find the drive specified.

C:\Users\johnb>net use h: \\server1\share1
The password is invalid for \\server1\share1.

Enter the user name for 'server1': johnb
Enter the password for filer: ******************
The command completed successfully.


C:\Users\johnb>N:

N:\>dir
 Volume in drive N is share1
 Volume Serial Number is 1D01-2B83

 Directory of N:\

31.03.2009  14:56    <DIR>          johns_treasure
02.04.2009  10:15                 8 johns_test.txt
12.05.2009  16:22             2 315 important_data.txt
17.06.2009  12:46            13 061 important.log