Ubuntu 17.10: Install cifs-utils for SMB client

This article will describe installing cifs-utils for SMB client.

1 Install cifs-utils

Install cifs-utils package.

$ sudo apt install -y cifs-utils

2 Mount SMB with mount.nfs

Mount SMB with mount.nfs to /mnt directory.

$ SMB_USERNAME=foobar
$ SMB_PASSWORD=foobar
$ SMB_SERVER="//smb-server.hiroom2.com/share"
$ sudo mount -t cifs \
       -o username=${SMB_USERNAME},password=${SMB_PASSWORD} \
       "${SMB_SERVER}" /mnt

3 Manage username and password with credentials option

The credentials option authentication via file.

$ cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/samba/credentials > /dev/null
username=${SMB_USERNAME}
password=${SMB_PASSWORD}
EOF
$ sudo chmod 600 /etc/samba/credentials
$ sudo mount -t cifs -o credentials=/etc/samba/credentials "${SMB_SERVER}" /mnt

4 Mount SMB on boot

Add mount entry to /etc/fstab. For avoiding mounting SMB before network initialization, you need to add _netdev option. For making x-systemd.automount to mount SMB, you need to add x-systemd.automount to option.

$ SMB_OPTION="credentials=/etc/samba/credentials,_netdev,x-systemd.automount"
$ echo "${SMB_SERVER} /mnt cifs ${SMB_OPTION} 0 0" | \
    sudo tee -a /etc/fstab