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I am a little confused on the proper fstab entry for a samba share in Ubuntu 12.04

  • I can get the drive to mount manually by using:

    sudo mount -t cifs //192.168.2.2/raid_drive /mnt/homeserver -o username=jon,password=password

  • So I tried putting this in fstab:

    //192.168.2.2/raid_drive /mnt/homeserver cifs username=jon,password=password,iocharset=utf8,mode=0777,dir_mode=07‌​77 0 0

  • Which gives me this error in syslog:

    kernel: [ 2217.925354] CIFS: Unknown mount option mode
kernel: [ 2217.936345] CIFS VFS: default security mechanism requested.  The default security mechanism will be upgraded from ntlm to ntlmv2 in kernel release 3.3

  • This guide says to use smbfs although I believe smbfs is deprecated?

What is a common fstab configuration for a samba share in Ubuntu 12.04?

EDIT:

Using the accepted answer below I was initially getting this error message (from dmesg):

[   45.520883] CIFS VFS: Error connecting to socket. Aborting operation
[   45.520990] CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -115

although it turns out this was due to network connectivity issues, and not related to improper fstab entry.

Jorge Castro
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jpetersen
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  • That means you'll have to pass the password on the file? Is that a way to make the password secure? –  Oct 16 '12 at 12:12
  • You could try using the server computer's IP address instead of its name. –  Sep 04 '12 at 14:59
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    You can use a .smb credentials file with only root permission as @russnash suggests below. – jpetersen Oct 16 '12 at 15:37
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    just tried your solution, but then i type sudo moun -a i get a error: [mntent]: line 13 in /etc/fstab is bad this is what i have typed /etc/fstab: //192.168.1.8/avcenter/Service\ -\ Installation /media/Service cifs credentials=.smbcredentials,uid=shareuser,gid=sharegroup 0 0 the reason for \ is that i read somewhere that if there where spaces in the folder then i should type \ to indicate that its a space.. even tried "Service - Installation" –  Mar 18 '13 at 21:08

2 Answers2

146

I've been through exactly this same issue this morning with 12.04 and here's how I got it working:

Install cifs-utils Install smbfs (even if you already have Samba and related packages installed):

sudo apt-get install cifs-utils

Edit /etc/fstab and add your entry:

//server/share /pathto/mountpoint cifs credentials=/home/username/.smbcredentials,uid=shareuser,gid=sharegroup 0 0

Create the .smbcredentials file in your home directory:

username=shareuser
password=sharepassword
domain=domain_or_workgroupname

Make sure you secure your ~/.smbcredentials file:

chmod 0600 ~/.smbcredentials

Finally, test the mount with:

sudo mount -a

...and you should be good to go!

Community
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russnash
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    I can't write to the share, even though the same user can when logging in with Windows. Is this a read only mount? – waspinator Dec 15 '12 at 05:55
  • `smbfs` has been replaced with `cifs-utils`, other than that the instructions work for me too. – metakermit Nov 08 '13 at 16:42
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    I ran into an error ("bad option: uid=my_username"). I got past it by removing the uid & gid options in fstab. – reg Oct 02 '14 at 06:14
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    @reg The correct option is `user` when the username is given (similarly `group`) since `uid` is for the numerical user id. – Premek Brada Nov 13 '14 at 20:18
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    As an aside, the [Ubuntu wiki has a full page on mounting samba shares](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MountWindowsSharesPermanently) including troubleshooting stuff. – Premek Brada Nov 13 '14 at 20:20
  • //server/share /pathto/mountpoint cifs password= – Sergey Shuchkin Sep 10 '15 at 04:33
  • refer to this link [https://github.com/mrnorouzi/smbmount](https://github.com/mrnorouzi/smbmount) – Mohammad Reza Norouzi Oct 07 '15 at 10:25
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    The reason why you should put your credentials into a file is because /etc/fstab is readable by everyone and so are your passwords in it. Source: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MountWindowsSharesPermanently#Mount_password_protected_network_folders – tedi Jun 23 '17 at 08:51
  • "username=domain/user" in the credentials file worked fine for smbclient, but @russnash's idea here of splitting it out to a separate line finally fixed it for me. THANK YOU! – harvest316 Mar 08 '18 at 02:58
  • Excellent solution. Thank You. – Ken Ingram Aug 16 '20 at 01:59
  • How does this work if I have a server with MULTIPLE shares? For example, I have a SMB location `smb://nas6aba8c.local/) that has hundreds of folders/shares, I want them all mounted, but I obviously can't list them all. – Raleigh L. Aug 11 '22 at 05:59
5

Your initial problem is in the option mode, as syslog says in the first line. What you probably meant was file_mode, see man mount.cifs for more information.

The credential approach mentioned by Eliah is indeed better than using username and password, but I don't think it interferes with the other options like file_mode or dir_mode.

Eric Carvalho
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Vitor
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