Suse 10.2 Samba Share Automount

[dave_boo]

Ok, I've added the necessary lines to my fstab, and it shows up in Konqueror as "Unmounted Samba (Microsoft Network) Share". A simple "mount /media/NAS && mount /media/NAS_USB" will mount both though. What am I missing?

Relevant /etc/fstab entries:

//10.0.0.7/DISK	/media/NAS		cifs	guest,rw,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=077,auto 0 0
//10.0.0.7/usb_hdd_1_1	/media/NAS_USB		cifs	guest,rw,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777,auto 0 0

[Cyberstar]

Although I'm quite satisfied having all my shared folders, etc. on a Suse 10.2 server (with a mixed bunch of clients on Win XP, Kubuntu 7.04 and Suse 10.2) - and thus don't have to deal with the problem you're facing - I got curious and spend some hours on experimenting with automounting a WinXP folder on the Suse server... Unfurtunately, I must admit I didn't succeed, neither ... (manual mounting worked okay, and no problem with doing what ever I wanted with any individual file on the WinXP clients from the Suse server).

I'm sure that don't help in case you MUST have shared folders on your clients.

//edit - Just wanted to add that this was the first time I've had to manually edit fstab - If some particular thing can't be handled via the Yast GUI - there'll always be another way to make a reasonable solution via the Yast GUI (otherwise, forget it) ... has been my thumb of rule .... However, manual edit of fstab ought to be independent of distribution brand, so I'm quite mystified why the feodora, slackware, etc. geeks haven't chimed in on what sounds to be a general problem with a (for the experts) standard solution?

Could it be that there doesn't exist one???

Edited June 22, 2007 by Cyberstar

[autonomous_unit]

I don't have any experience mounting CIFS shares from Linux, nor any experience with SuSE. Also, the use of /media for your mounts is suspicious to me, as that is commonly used by some of the goofy graphical desktop software that has been added to Linux over the years. As part of the old guard of Linux users, I have steered well clear of that junk and cannot give any useful advice.

However, the "auto" option in /etc/fstab should only affect whether the system tries to mount the entry at boot when the "mount -a" command is executed. If you issue a "mount -a" instead of your specific "mount /media/NAS", does it mount OK?

A common problem with NFS mounts (somewhat analogous to CIFS mounts) is that the fileserver may not be available at the time a client system boots, so the mount will fail if it is just listed in /etc/fstab. The solution to this is to use an automounter which is usually configured via /etc/auto.master and friends (see auto.master and read its manpage). The service is often started via /etc/init.d/autofs.

The advantage of the automounter is that the mount is not attempted until an application tries to use the mount point, and it will automatically retry until it suceeds. In environments where there are dozens of fileservers and hundreds of remote mount points, this is the only sane way to configure workstations so that everything usually "just works".

[dave_boo]

Thanks for both the replies. I've been hitting up the various IRC channels, and they keep refering me to another, or taking me through steps I know and already did!

To Cyberstar:

Yeah, I had it working before, but I installed a new drive cause the other was full. It automounted the NAS's partitions automatically, and never caused problems.

To autonomous_unit:

Yes, SuSE (and I think Ubuntu, but know that Mandravia) use the /media. I don't like it either, the proper place should be /mount, but if I go with the flow, when I open /media, all the cd/dvds, hdds, etc are there.

And yes, a mount -a will mount both NAS partitions, but it's not as much fun as the long version. Also, I was under the impression that mount -a mounted "all" and not automatically. Or am I misunderstanding you?

I'm going to give the auto.master a go. I don't know any reason that it won't do it with a simple fstab edit, but oh well. It's really strange, since the NAS is always up, and I don't know why it wouldn't want to mount.

[Gumballl]

Ok, I've added the necessary lines to my fstab, and it shows up in Konqueror as "Unmounted Samba (Microsoft Network) Share". A simple "mount /media/NAS && mount /media/NAS_USB" will mount both though. What am I missing?

Relevant /etc/fstab entries:

//10.0.0.7/DISK	/media/NAS		cifs	guest,rw,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=077,auto 0 0
//10.0.0.7/usb_hdd_1_1	/media/NAS_USB		cifs	guest,rw,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777,auto 0 0

Try using smbfs in lieu of cifs. Also, it appears the dir_mode in your first entry is missing a'7'.