This will help you mounting smbfs shares permanently. These can be shares on a Windows computer or on a Linux/UNIX server running Samba.

Is it true that smbfs is depricated? According to [http://joey.ubuntu-rocks.org/blog/2007/04/25/resolution-to-mounting-samba-shares-dont-use-smbfs/ a blog post by Joey Stanford] we need to use CIFS instead of smbfs!

Samba File System installation

sudo apt-get install smbfs

Mounting unprotected (guest) network folders

Assumed that:

• Network connections have been configured properly.

• The Windows computer name is servername, this can be either an IP address or an assigned name.

• The name of the share is sharename.

• You want to mount the share in a folder mountname.

First, let's create the mount folder. You will need a separate folder for each mount.

sudo mkdir /media/mountname

Then edit your /etc/fstab file (you need root privileges) to add this line:

//servername/sharename  /media/mountname  smbfs  guest,uid=1000,iocharset=utf8,codepage=unicode,unicode  0  0

Where

• guest indicates you don't need a password to access the share,

• uid=1000 makes the Linux-user with specified uid or username owner of the mounted share, thereby allowing that user to rename files,

• the combination iocharset=utf8,codepage=unicode,unicode allows access to files with names in non-English languages. This doesn't work with shares of devices like the Buffalo Tera Station, or Windows machines that export their shares using ISO8895-15. With these the codepage argument has to be codepage=cp850, otherwise characters like the German 'Umlaute' are displayed as garbage.

After you added the entry to /etc/fstab type:

sudo mount -a

This will (re)mount all entries in /etc/fstab

Mount password protected network folders

Assume the previous, plus:

• Share username on Windows computer is myusername.

• Share password on Windows computer is mypassword.

You could add the following to /etc/fstab:

//servername/sharename  /media/mountname  smbfs  username=myusername,password=mypassword  0  0

However, the /etc/fstab is readable by everyone so it obviously wouldn't be a good idea to have your Windows password in it. The way to get around this is by using what is known as a credentials file. This is a file that contains just the username and password.

sudo gedit ~/.smbcredentials

Add the following lines:

username=myusername
password=mypassword

and save it.

Modify the permissions on the file so only you have permission to read and write to it. The only thing in the file is your Windows username and password.

sudo chmod 600 ~/.smbcredentials

Now add the following line for Read and write permission for everyone:

//servername/sharename  /media/mountname  smbfs  credentials=~/.smbcredentials,dmask=777,fmask=777  0  0

or for only read permission:

//servername/sharename  /media/mountname  smbfs  credentials=~/.smbcredentials  0  0

On some systems, smbfs automount does not work correctly. As a workaround, you can add the "noauto" parameter to your smbfs fstab entry and then have the share mounted at login

/etc/fstab:

//servername/sharename  /media/mountname  smbfs  noauto,credentials=~/.smbpasswd  0  0

then edit your /etc/rc.local to mount the smbfs when you log in (make sure the permissions on your /etc/rc.local will allow users to execute it:

mount /media/mountname
exit 0

Special permissions

If you need special permission (like chmod etc.) you need to add uid or gid flag. You can set either UID or username

//servername/sharename  /media/mountname  smbfs   uid=uros,credentials=~/.smbcredentials,dmask=777,fmask=777   0       0

In that case /media/sharename will be owned by user uros.

Mounting a Share with Read/Write rights with a regular User (Without Prompt)

Open a Terminal and type:

id 

This should output something similar to:

uid=1000(craize) gid=1000(craize) groups=...

So for my user (craize) the User ID is 1000 and the Group ID is 1000 too.

Add the following to /etc/fstab:

//servername/sharename  /media/mountname  smbfs  defaults,uid=1000,gid=1000,credentials=~/.smbpasswd,umask=777  0  0

Troubleshooting

Unprotected network folder won't automount

I've had a situation where an unprotected network folder wouldn't automount during bootup, but after manually entering "sudo mount -a" was mounted correctly. I solved this by replacing the "guest" option by "username=guest,password=". If anyone has an explaination for this, please leave a comment.

//servername/sharename  /media/mountname  smbfs  username=guest,password=,uid=1000,iocharset=utf8,codepage=unicode,unicode  0  0