Accessing data from the spectrometers and network storage on Windows and Mac computers

All the NMR spectrometers run the network service "samba"  (SMB) to export network shared drives in a Windows and Mac-compatible format.  All of those shares are named nmrdata. Additionally, the NMR network repository (mangia.caltech.edu) has two SMB shares on it containing archived data.  One is called data and it collects a nightly update of all the data taken on the spectrometer host computers and adds it to the repository.  The second is called sun_data and it contains the data we recovered from the older Sun workstations, plus the data taken on the Linux hosts up through mid-November 2008.

To access these shared folders as network drives under Windows, go to This PC, -> Computer, and choose Map Network Drive.  Choose an unused drive letter.  In the Folder box, put the name of the spectrometer you wish to connect with:

\\fid.caltech.edu\nmrdata
\\florence.caltech.edu\nmrdata
\\venice.caltech.edu\nmrdata
etc.

or for the archives on the server:

\\mangia.caltech.edu\nmrdata

and then click Connect using a different user name.  Enter the user name nobody (nobody2 in the case of mangia) and the password (ask the NMR lab staff if you do not know) and click OK.  Click Finish in the Map Network Drive box; in a few seconds, you should get a new directory view window of the user directory tree. (If you check the box to save your login information, then you can skip these steps in the future.)  For the Varian instruments, go down the tree home -> your username -> vnmrsys -> data to get to the data folders.  For Bruker, go to your username, nmr, then to individual spectra

   To do the same operation on a Mac, choose Go -> Connect to server.  In the box that appears, type smb://fid.caltech.edu/nmrdata (or other machine name as shown above).  Note the forward slashes here, unlike the back slashes for Windows.  At the next step, you will be prompted for the name and password (same as above).

 
    By default, everyone within Caltech has read permission to the data in all the trees.  Read permission also gives you permission to copy to anyplace you have write permission (such as the desktop of your own computer or local drives you may have).  The nobody account does not have any write access. (Write access in Linux also grants permission to delete files.) It is possible to make data folders inaccessible to other users by default, and set up Samba access with an alternative user name and an individual password. However, there are many reasons why someone would legitimately want to view data in someone else's folder, so we discourage making that a default setting.  

  The Linux desktop will automount many types of USB devices if you just plug them in to a free USB port.  A directory view should automatically appear and you can drag and drop files into it.  When you are done,  close that window, right click on the USB drive icon, and unmount it before removing the USB drive.
    
   From off campus, you can also access the network drives if you can make a VPN connection to the Caltech network.