mounting file servers and other network resources

[Vegan]

I have Windows and Linux in virtual machines, so can I get Linux to mount a file server share?

such as //fileserver1/array1

also how about dealing with credentials for the servers etc

I am using Windows Server for the file server, and I also know how to use SAMBA a bit

[darkod]

If you want to use the server name first make sure the ubuntu machine can resolve it. You can always use the server IP.

The temporary mount from command line should be something like:

sudo mount -t cifs //serverIP/sharename /mountpoint -o username=username,password=password

You can set a permanent mount in /etc/fstab which should look like:

//serverIP/sharename   /mountpoint   cifs   _netdev,username=username,password=password   0   0

I think that chould work. The _netdev option is letting the OS know it's a network resource, so it can wait a little if finding the share takes long time. If you want to, instead of putting the username and password in /etc/fstab you can put them in a file and use that with the option credentials=/path/filename

[rubylaser]

Just one other thought to add onto Darko's great directions. If you don't want to have your username and password in /etc/fstab, you can create a file that contains them and make it only readable by root.

nano /root/.smbcredentials

Put your username and password in that file like this.

username=myusername
password=mypassword

chmod the file like this

chmod 700 /root/.smbcredentials

Finally, slightly modify the /etc/fstab line that Darkod gave you.

//serverIP/sharename   /mountpoint   cifs   _netdev,credentials=/root/.smbcredentials 0   0

[prodigy_]

//serverIP/sharename   /mountpoint   cifs   _netdev,username=username,password=password   0   0

AFAIK, cifs doesn't honor _netdev. I mount cifs shares from /etc/rc.local but that's with static IP configured in /etc/network/interfaces. Not sure if that would work with Network Manager.

For Windows servers you also need to add domain=domain_name option if your server is in a domain or workgroup=workgroup_name otherwise. Substitute your actual domain or workgroup name. The workgroup option is rarely mentioned in HOWTOs but it's necessary.