Using winecfg to map a drive letter to a shared network folder

To map a drive letter in Wine to a network share, you can't type a \\server\share Universal Naming Convention directly into winecfg. Wine requires network shares to be mounted locally on your host operating system (OS), such as Linux or macOS, first. To mount a network share using the Server Message Block (SMB) communication protocol, take the following steps:

1. Mount the SMB Share on Your Host OS

   Open a terminal window Mount the Windows network share to a local directory on your machine using cifs-utils.

   sudo mkdir -p /mnt/WINSHARE
   sudo mount -t cifs //IP_OR_HOSTNAME/SHARE_NAME /mnt/winshare -o username=USERNAME
   

   Subsitute the name you wish to use for the mount point for WINSHARE, the IP address or hostname for IP_OR_HOSTNAME, the name of the share on the remote computer for SHARE_NAME, and the relevant username for USERNAME. E.g.:

   alice@Wonderland:~$ sudo mkdir -p /mnt/borras_public
   [sudo: authenticate] Password:               
   ailce@Wonderland:~$ sudo mount -t cifs //borras/public /mnt/borras_public -o username=alice
   Password for alice@//borras/public: 
   alice@Wonderland:~$
   

   Verify access by checking if the files appear:

   ls /mnt/winshare

2. Open Wine Configuration

   Launch the Wine configuration utility from the terminal window.

   winecfg

   (If using a specific prefix, issue the command WINEPREFIX=/path/to/prefix winecfg, instead).

3. Add a New Drive Letter

   Select the Drives tab at the top of the winecfg window.

   • Click the Add... button at the bottom.
   • Select an available drive letter (e.g. Z:) from the drop-down menu and click OK.
4. Link the Drive to the Mount Point

   With your new drive letter selected in the list:

   • Locate the Target: input field near the bottom.
   • Enter the path where you mounted the share (e.g., /mnt/winshare) or click Browse... to select it.
   • (Optional) Click Show Advanced and set the drive Type to Network drive.
5. Apply and Test

   To verify the mapping was successful, open Wine's file manager:

   wine winefile

   Your mapped drive letter should now be visible and accessible under My Computer.

[/os/unix/linux/wine] permanent link