BIPS Network Shares

Modified

2026-05-14

You can access BIPS network drives (the G: and H: drives from Windows) from the workstation. Since each user has different access rights, the shares are mounted per-user.

Using mount_bips

The easiest way is the mount_bips script:

# Mount the shared group drive (G:)
mount_bips -g

# Mount your personal home folder (H:)
mount_bips -h

The script handles authentication and creates a convenient symlink at ~/G (or ~/H) for you.

WarningMounts don’t survive reboots

Network mounts are lost when the workstation restarts. You’ll need to run mount_bips again after a reboot. If you need the data frequently, consider copying it to the workstation instead (see Storage below).

Credentials

When mounting for the first time, you’ll be prompted for:

  • User: Your BIPS username (usually your last name) — this may differ from your workstation username
  • Domain: BIPS
  • Password: Your BIPS account password (not necessarily the same as your workstation password)

Where the mount appears

After mounting, the share is available at:

/var/run/user/$(id -u)/gvfs/smb-share:server=10.10.11.141,share=gruppen

The mount_bips script creates a symlink at ~/G so you don’t have to deal with this path. Note that ls ~/G (without trailing /) shows the symlink itself — use ls ~/G/ (with trailing /) to see the contents.

Manual mounting

If the script doesn’t work for some reason, you can mount manually with gio:

# Mount the group drive
/usr/bin/gio mount smb://10.10.11.141/gruppen
Note

Use the full path /usr/bin/gio — some environments (e.g. conda) may shadow gio with their own version.

Then create a symlink for convenience:

ln -s "/var/run/user/$(id -u)/gvfs/smb-share:server=10.10.11.141,share=gruppen" ~/G

When to copy data locally

Network shares are slower than local storage. Depending on your use case:

Scenario Recommendation
One-time data retrieval Access directly via mount
Active project with frequent reads/writes Copy to home directory (SSD, fast)
Large datasets, infrequent access Copy to /mnt/data/projects/<username> (HDD, more space)

See Storage for more on the SSD vs HDD trade-off.