Mounting cifs drive gives: mount error(22): Invalid argument

Question

I'm trying to run:

sudo mount -t cifs //user.my-backup.com /mnt/wal_drive -o iocharset=utf8,rw,credentials=/etc/backupcredentials.txt,uid=postgres,gid=postgres,file_mode=0660,dir_mode=0770

However I keep on getting the following error:

mount error(22): Invalid argument
Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g. man mount.cifs)

What am I doing wrong?

Two possible problems: your source is an URL which either may not resolve or is not advertising Samba; and, the uid/gid need to be expressed numerically. Have you read the referred `man` page? — douggro, Feb 27 '14 at 15:57
Mount should really return a better error message. Knowing which argument is invalid would make this error message so much more helpful. — Gregory Arenius, Jul 06 '18 at 21:23
Mount gives a generic error because the details are in the log. As it is said below, use tail -f /var/log/kern.log to understand what's going on. — Sam, Feb 13 '19 at 11:29
`dmesg | tail` tells you a bit more about which option is giving you trouble. — HongboZhu, Jul 15 '19 at 12:24

score 82 · Answer 1 · edited May 06 '14 at 05:14

82

maybe this helps with this, mount error(22): Invalid argument... possible error is the argument/s (mode) on mount command.

check your logs on the errors encountered.
```
tail -f  /var/log/kern.log 
```
remove the invalid argument

edited May 06 '14 at 05:14

Avinash Raj

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answered May 06 '14 at 05:12

user278458

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This worked for me. I found the error `CIFS not working, kernel upgrade:No dialect specified on mount` and resolved it by [adding] `vers=1.0` to my /etc/fstab(https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=230952). I suspect it is caused by using kernel 4.13. – blaha Nov 13 '17 at 23:27
1

Jeez, thank goodness for stackoverflow. Same problem on ubuntu. I added vers=2.0 and it works. Current mount.cifs is at 6.4. Probably some enhancements to credentials but not digging into CIFS now... – dturvene Jun 08 '18 at 13:15

score 15 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 17 '19 at 13:14

15

Another possible cause is the presence of sec=ntlm in /etc/fstab and it's incompatibility with newer SMB protocols like SMB3.

While not the OP's case, this can also cause mount error(22): Invalid argument errors, as it did for me after upgrading an old server.

Even though kern.log includes a suggestion to specify vers=1.0 on mount, it may be safer to remove or change sec=ntlm instead. Perhaps use the defaults to allow automatic negotiation of the SMB version and security, or specify compatible options such as vers=3.0,sec=ntlmssp.

Obviously this depends on your SMB server's features, but I would try and avoid vers=1.0 unless necessary.

answered Feb 17 '19 at 13:14

drgrog

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This worked for me. I have a Synology DS918+. Enabled SMB3 on the NAS. Set `vers=3.0` parameter and removed the `sec=ntlm` parameter. Thanks. – dgnorton Apr 12 '20 at 14:48
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You answer was very helpful to me. I removed `sec=ntlm` completely and then all my drives mounted. Thank you. – Lonnie Best May 09 '20 at 04:55

score 10 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 20 '18 at 07:29

10

I had the same issue on Arch Linux, with this message in log:

kernel: CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -22

For me the solution was to specify older version of cifs (by default it was 3.0):

/etc/fstab:

//my-router/share /media/share cifs ver="2.1",rw,soft,uid=ele,gid=ele,file_mode=0770,dir_mode=0770,credentials=/etc/router-credentials.conf 0 0

edited Apr 20 '18 at 07:29

Zanna

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answered Oct 07 '17 at 16:41

Igor Golovin

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Could you please explain your command? what "soft" , uid and other parts mean? – Luke Feb 21 '20 at 07:24
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1) `soft` - The program accessing a file on the cifs mounted file system will not hang when the server crashes and will return errors to the user application. 2) `uid` and `gid` - sets the uid that will own all files or directories on the mounted filesystem when the server does not provide ownership information. 3) `file_mode` and `dir_mode` works the same way as `uid` and `gid`. 4) `0 0` these fields are not used, and by convention set to `0` For more information please see [mount.cifs man](https://linux.die.net/man/8/mount.cifs) – Igor Golovin Feb 22 '20 at 10:43

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 08 '16 at 14:41

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In my case, this issue was caused because I had mounted a directory full of symbolic links. After investigating the symbolic links in Windows, I got their "real" paths and mounted those instead.

answered Jan 08 '16 at 14:41

pzkpfw

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score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 28 '14 at 09:28

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I was using a wrong URL. It should have been: //user.my-backup.com/backup

answered Feb 28 '14 at 09:28

Niels Kristian

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Some file shares stop the use of the top level. I had to pick a sub folder to mount. – user3520245 Mar 30 '23 at 10:56

score 2 · Answer 6 · answered Jan 18 '18 at 08:21

You can add the version information for SMB to solve the issue. What i did is i added vers=1.0. This is SMB version 1 which works with all the smb drivers. For your case it will look something like this

sudo mount -t cifs //user.my-backup.com /mnt/wal_drive -o iocharset=utf8,rw,vers=1.0,credentials=/etc/backupcredentials.txt,uid=postgres,gid=postgre ,file_mode=0660,dir_mode=0770

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Sep 03 '20 at 09:54

I am on CentOS I know this is Ubuntu but bear with me, this still comes top on google. People are correct to say that mount -a will give you the error.. on centos you then have to type # dmesg which will tell you what was actually wrong in detail

For me, I had to change

# cat /etc/centos-release
CentOS release 6.9 (Final)
# nano /etc/fstab
 ------------------------------------------------
 \\192.168.0.4\Work /mount/drive cifs user,rw,suid,uid=48,umask=0777,username=*****,password=******* 0 0

to

 # cat /etc/centos-release
 # CentOS Linux release 8.2.2004 (Core)
 # nano /etc/fstab
 ------------------------------------------------
 \\192.168.0.4\Work /mount/drive cifs user,rw,suid,uid=48,file_mode=0770,dir_mode=0770,username=*****,password=******* 0 0

the error I got was under dmesg was CIFS: Unknown mount option "umask=0777"

note that umask is no longer allowed

score 1 · Answer 8 · edited Aug 25 '15 at 21:26

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After upgrading to Jessie Debian the package must have changed. I removed guid=0 from the following fstab mount and it all worked correct again.

//x.x.x.x/General/  /usr/local/share/general cifs uid=0,guid=0,rw,credentials=/etc/gen-cifspasswd 0 0

edited Aug 25 '15 at 21:26

muru

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answered Aug 25 '15 at 21:15

Benjamin Stewart

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score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Sep 30 '20 at 08:54

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Same error when try to mount a directory that in fact was a symbolic link.

Solution: add domain name to search directive in /etc/resolv.conf

search example.org

After that I was able to successfully mount the target.

answered Sep 30 '20 at 08:54

jschnasse

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Mounting cifs drive gives: mount error(22): Invalid argument

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