Mounting Samba share whenever it's available, unmounting when it's not

Question

I am trying setup permanent samba share mounts. That's not too hard using these instructions. But, I want them to

Automatically remount whenever I join the network where these shares are available.
Automatically unmount (or make access requests fail immediately instead of hanging) whenever I leave the network, i.e. avoid this automatically.

Googling suggests that AutoFS might be helpful. I gather it takes care of the 1. above but I am not sure about the 2.

The other questions about automated Samba mounts, i.e. How to mount a samba share permanently?, do not seem to address automatic remounts/unmounts, so I think this is not a duplicate.

Thanks.

score 32 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 21 '16 at 13:33

32

Mounting Samba shares with CIFS:

Edit your /etc/fstab file to automatically mount your Samba shares:

//<server>/<share> <mount point> cifs rw,_netdev,user=<username>,password=<password>,uid=<uid>,gid=<gid> 0 0

Notice the _netdev option:

CIFS doesn't know about this option and will throw a warning about it, but you should leave it in.

This option ensures that the drives won't get mounted if you have no network or if you are on the wrong network.

It also makes sure your shares get mounted/unmounted when you switch networks. That's because Debian's if* scripts are triggered when your network configuration changes, and they watch all the filesystems with the _netdev option and do the right thing automagically.

Source

you can check man mount for more information about _netdev

To install the CIFS tools

sudo apt-get install cifs-utils

edited Oct 21 '16 at 13:33

Community

1

answered Oct 08 '12 at 09:03

Thanks, I will try this out. If this works as advertised, this is exactly what I was looking for. – Laurynas Biveinis Oct 08 '12 at 09:42
You are welcome try and inform us by the result please – Oct 08 '12 at 09:56
So what happens with you?! – Oct 09 '12 at 08:31
I have planned to check this later today. – Laurynas Biveinis Oct 09 '12 at 11:22
I added "//ip/share /mnt/mnt-point cifs rw,_netdev,nodev,noexec,user,username=foo,password=bar,uid=foo,gid=foo,file_mode=0600,dir_mode=0700,nounix 0 0" to /etc/fstab, mounted the share, started a file op, killed the WiFi by HW switch, and it hanged. – Laurynas Biveinis Oct 09 '12 at 14:21
1

...actually it just has a rather big timeout value, but that's OK. I tested it some more, it does work. Thanks! – Laurynas Biveinis Oct 09 '12 at 14:31
You are welcome. Have a nice day – Oct 09 '12 at 14:40

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 01 '12 at 14:46

4

Write the scripts to mount and to unmount the share.

Place them in "/etc/network/if-up.d" and in "/etc/network/if-down.d" respectively. These are the locations for scripts that are run when the network connection is established or closed.

However, if you are looking for a particular server to come up or down online, the only solution I see is to make a cron job that checks the server connection periodically, keeps the state and runs the scripts accordingly.

answered Oct 01 '12 at 14:46

elomage

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For robustness (i.e. server going down unexpectedly) I think the latter solution is a better one. I will wait for more answers, if any, in the case this particular wheel has been invented already. Paldies. – Laurynas Biveinis Oct 02 '12 at 15:06

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 03 '12 at 20:04

1

AutoFS will work fine. It will auto mount when you access the share, remount if dropped and unmount when idle. When you log off and your processes are all terminated (due to log off) then the mount will fall after being idle for some time. You can configure the idle time.

See this how-to: http://www.howtoforge.com/accessing_windows_or_samba_shares_using_autofs

answered Oct 03 '12 at 20:04

Van

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Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, [it would be preferable](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/8259) to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link for reference. – nanofarad Oct 03 '12 at 20:41
Thanks. Will it hang trying to mount if I try to access the mount point outside the network? Likewise if it is mounted and I suspend while on the network, then resume outside of it with some request keeping the mount busy? – Laurynas Biveinis Oct 04 '12 at 04:24

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 04 '12 at 23:56

The mount will always try to re-connect when you access the resource. If you are network hopping then it will depend if you have a route to the host or not. But, AutoFS will keep trying. There are parameters you can configure (timeouts, retries, etc).

Mounting Samba share whenever it's available, unmounting when it's not

4 Answers4