SMB/Samba and Linux-what gives?

I've messed with this a few times now, and every time I go through it, I get more and more frustrated with the fact there isn't an easier way to do something so simple.

Mounting SMB shares, which are quite prevalent and used by many, should not be so difficult.

Modifying fstab, while simple in principle, can be frustrating as all hell.

Autofs seems to not be much better.

I understand you can mount these on the fly, but that does no good after a reboot.

All of us keep our media on servers these days, and for the most part I'd bet it's an SMB share of some kind, due to most enthusiasts having Windows.

Hell-MS got it done (map network drive), why the hell can't Linux?

/rant

I use NFS myself....I never found mounting smb shares that hard either.

Post your distro, version, etc and I'll see if I can give you a hand.

If you use ubuntu run the file manager program and put in this address in the address bar:

smb://user@server/share/

If it needs a password it should prompt you for one.

I find mounting SMB / CIF shares on Linux far easier than doing in on Windows with 'Tools > Map Network Drive'.

I'm talking about persistent mounting. Sure I can mount it just fine, but upon reboot it's gone. This is no good for something like a music folder on the network. If I set the Songbird library to the network, then it can't find it after reboot, that creates headaches. However, in windows, a mapped drive reconnects after reboot. Doing such a thing isn't as easy in Linux.

/etc/fstab

Not knowing entirely your situation I'll throw out a linux product that makes using samba very easy. It's called ClearOS. All the configuration is done via a web GUI but if you prefer you can always jump to CLI if you want. This isn't a desktop distro it is a purpose built server distro. I've installed this many times and it is by far the easiest to use for someone that is looking for a Linux product they can install and use without having to be a Linux expert. Give it shot and I think you will be pleasently surprised. Let us konw how it goes.

The fstab entry for a samba share is not at all complicated. I.E.


That's all you actually need,but you can add more fluff if you desire...

NFS is almost the same except the first argument is ipaddress:/share_path and the filesystem argument is nfs instead of cifs.

Were you experiencing some sort of other difficulties?

MS just put 'net use * \\<servername>\<share>' into a GUI

Linux is pretty close mount -t cifs //mediacomp/music /mnt/music


(although the times I've used cifs to connect to a windows share eventually caused problems so I use smb)