Network Share Login via C#

Accessing remote share programmatically from Windows is easy. Just use \\machine\share notation and you're golden. Except if you need to access it with a specific user. While PrincipalContext can often help, for samba shares hosted by Linux, that doesn't necessarily work.

But we can always use the same thing the Explorer does - WNetUseConnection. And calling upon it is easy enough. We only need to fill NETRESOURCE with a remote path and forward it along as a parameter. Result is standard 0 for success and non-zero for any failure.

Code  Copy
bool Login(string path, string user, string password) {
  var nr = new NativeMethods.NETRESOURCE {
    dwType = NativeMethods.RESOURCETYPE_DISK,
    lpRemoteName = path
  };
  var result = NativeMethods.WNetUseConnection(IntPtr.Zero, nr, password, name, 0, IntPtr.Zero, IntPtr.Zero, IntPtr.Zero);
  return (result == NativeMethods.NO_ERROR);
}

And, of course, we also need our definitions:

Code: NativeMethods  Copy
private static class NativeMethods {
    internal const Int32 NO_ERROR = 0;
    internal const Int32 RESOURCETYPE_DISK = 0x00000001;

    [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]
    internal class NETRESOURCE {
        public Int32 dwScope = 0;
        public Int32 dwType = 0;
        public Int32 dwDisplayType = 0;
        public Int32 dwUsage = 0;
        public IntPtr lpLocalName;
        public String lpRemoteName;
        public IntPtr lpComment;
        public IntPtr lpProvider;
    }

    [DllImport("mpr.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Ansi)]
    internal static extern Int32 WNetUseConnection(
        IntPtr hwndOwner,
        NETRESOURCE lpNetResource,
        String lpPassword,
        String lpUserId,
        Int32 dwFlags,
        IntPtr lpAccessName,
        IntPtr lpBufferSize,
        IntPtr lpResult
    );

}

And that should be enough for access.