How to Mount an Ad Hoc Linux or UNIX Share in Nautilus on Ubuntu
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If you have a background in Microsoft Windows, you know that network shares are almost always available to you, but hidden. The famous c$ style hidden admin shares are always there if you know to look for them and can be super handy for moving files around when doing administration tasks. On Linux, things work a little differently. Instead of traditional shares over SMB, CIFS, or NFS we often resort to the similar SFTP protocol for these tasks.
On Ubuntu, if you are using Nautilus, we can work with SFTP "shares" exactly like we work with SMB shares from Windows. In Nautilus simple go to "Other Servers" and enter the Linux system that you want to connect to in this format:
sftp://myserver/
or
sftp://192.168.1.5/
This gives you the equivalent to the admin share in Windows, but you don't need to know the drive letter!
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And it should be noted, that unlike SMB or NFS shares that would be generally frowned upon to use over the Internet, SFTP is heavily encrypted and very secure and is often used over public networks.
