Windows file sharing to Linux using cifs and fstab

Here one way to share Windows folders with a Linux machine is presented.

Warning: These instructions are for a test/development machine for which you are the only user aside from system process users.

Note: You may need to resolve Windows sharing and security issues, which are beyond the scope of this page.

Share the Windows folder (and subfolders and files).

The following should already be installed.

The following Linux command(s) to install SMB/CIFS for accessing Windows shares.

sudo yum -y install cifs-utils

A local mount point is needed. This is usually in the folder /media which should already exist.

For historical reasons, the local mount point is called AX8-DATA which shares to Windows machine AX8 and share name DATA. I tend to use the DATA share name on Windows machines, but, on the Liunx side, the names need to be distinct. This, in this case, AX8-DATA is used from the Linux side for this share.

The local mount point will be /media/AX8-DATA.

The following Linux command(s) create the local mount point folder /media/AX8-DATA and assign permissions and ownership.

sudo mkdir /media//AX8-DATA sudo chmod -R 777 /media/AX8-DATA sudo chown -R robin:rmsgroup /media/AX8-DATA sudo chgrp rmsgroup /media/AX8-DATA

The following Linux command(s) access the Windows share DATA on machine AX8.

sudo mount.cifs \\\\AX8\\DATA /media/AX8-DATA -o user=robin,pass=omitted

Note that double backslashes are needed for the command line mount.

The following Linux command(s) list the folders and files on the root of the Windows share.

ls -ls /media/AX8-DATA

Note: If you list the contents and the share is not mounted, no error is issued but a total of 0 is displayed.

The following Linux command(s) unmount the mounted drive /media/AX8-DATA.

sudo umount /media/AX8-DATA

The following Linux command(s) see all mounted drives.

df -h

On 2019-08-09 the output was as follows.

... omitted ... \\AX8\DATA 466G 439G 27G 95% /media/AX8-DATA

The mounted Windows share should be visible in the output.

When modifying and testing the boot drive mounts it can be useful to remount the drives.

The following Linux command(s) remount any drives in fstab that might have changed.

sudo mount -av

On 2019-08-09 the output was as follows.

/ : ignored /boot : already mounted /boot/efi : already mounted /home : already mounted swap : ignored

The above only mounts the Windows share during the current session.

To mount the Windows share at boot the fstab file needs to be modified.

Be very careful when modifying the fstab file.

The following Linux command(s) edit the boot time drive mount file fstab.

sudo nano /etc/fstab

Then make the following changes in the editor at the end of the fstab file.

\\AX8\DATA /media/AX8-DATA cifs user=robin,pass=omitted,uid=5000,gid=6000file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777 0 0 -O _netdev

The last option, "-O _netdev", causes the drive not to be mounted until after the network connection - which is required for access to the remote drive on the local network.

Note: The _netdev parameter is supposed to work, but it did not work for me.

Make sure that /media/AX8-DATA has been unmounted and remount the drives.

The following Linux command(s) remount any drives in fstab that might have changed.

sudo mount -av

On 2019-08-09 the output was as follows.

/ : ignored /boot : already mounted /boot/efi : already mounted /home : already mounted swap : ignored mount.cifs kernel mount options: ip=192.168.100.131,unc=\\AX8\DATA,uid=5000,gid=6000,user=robin,pass=******** /media/AX8-DATA : successfully mounted

On the next reboot, the share should be avail
able - assuming that Windows machine is available in the same manner as when the share was created and tested.