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Mount SMB Network Drive using CFIS utils

CIFS is a protocol that allows sharing data over a network. Samba is a popular implementation of the CIFS protocol.

cifs-utils is a package that provides utilities for mounting and managing CIFS mounts.

In this guide, we will mount a shared folder from a NAS device to another Linux machine using the fstab file by using the cifs-utils package.

Prerequisites​

  1. A shared SMB folder (for example, NAS device)
  2. A Linux machine

Install cifs-utils​

sudo apt install cifs-utils

Create a SMB shared folder in the NAS device​

It depends on the NAS device you are using. In the case of Synology DSM, we can following the steps below:

  1. Open the Synology DSM web interface.
  2. Go to Control Panel > Shared Folder.
  3. Click Create to create a new shared folder. (e.g., Docker)
  4. Go to File Station and create a subfolder in the shared folder. (e.g., Docker/rpi)
tip

The best practice is creating a new user in the NAS device to access the shared folder. NOTE: the SMB & Shard Folder permission should be granted properly.

Create a directory to mount the shared folder​

In the Linux machine, create a directory to mount the shared folder.

sudo mkdir ~/Docker

Mount the shared folder​

/etc/fstab is a system file that contains information about filesystems and how they should be mounted. We can add an entry to the fstab file to mount the shared folder automatically.

  1. Find the IP address of the NAS device
  2. Edit the /etc/fstab file
proc            /proc           proc    defaults          0       0
# ... others
//192.168.0.206/Docker/rpi /home/user-name/Docker cifs username=nas-user-username,password=nas-user-password,uid=1000,gid=1000 0 0
# a swapfile is not a swap partition, no line here
#   use  dphys-swapfile swap[on|off]  for that
info
  • <nas-ip-address>: Find the IP address of the NAS device (e.g., 192.168.0.158)
  • <shared-folder-name>: Find the shared folder name (e.g., Docker/rpi)
  • <nas-user-username> & <nas-user-password>: Find the username and password of the shared folder
  • <uid> & <gid> Find the UID and GID of the user on the Ubuntu server, you can find it by running id command. The output will look like uid=1000(eric) gid=1000(eric) groups=1000(eric),4(adm),24(cdrom),27(sudo),30(dip),46(plugdev),101(lxd)

Mount the shared folder​

credentials=/.secrets/synology-rpi-argon

# reload system daemons
sudo systemctl daemon-reload

# mount the shared folder
sudo mount -a

Then we should be to see the shared folder content in ~/Docker.

danger

If you come across the permission issue accessing the shared folder by applications (e.g., Docker), it is because the cifs mount does not support the Unix/Linux file system permissions and ownership. The solution is to use nfs instead of cifs.