Help to mount remote samba share in fstab.
 

Server: Ubuntu Server Edition 8.04
/currently firewalled to only allow client ip

Client: Ubuntu Desktop 8.04
/currently firewalled to only allow server ip

Same userid and groups set up on on both.

I have taken two linux courses and can maneuver around fairly well, but am still pretty newbie at all this. We have loaded Samba on a server and created a Samba share. I AM able to access that share via Windows Vista, but have not been able to successfully mount the share on the Ubuntu desktop via the fstab file. I have tried the following ways:


serverip:/path/shareddirectory /net ext3 user,sync 0 0

and the samba way..

//serverip/sharename /net smbfs username=x,password=x


After modifying fstab, I reboot. No luck since that either way.
Only ONCE after modifying it samba way, I was prompted to enter credentials, but after login I was unable to view the files on the server. From this point on either way, if I run commmand 'mount -a' the response is "Special device serverip:/path/sharedirectory does not exist"

Also! I am able to ping client-to-server, but not server-to-client. Is there something obvious I'm missing??

serverip:/path/shareddirectory /net ext3 user,sync 0 0 is for NFS, so lets get ride of that.

Then I would say,

1. Try it with smbclient. smbclient --help or man smbclient to see how to use it, pretty straight forward.
2. Check your log files. /var/log/samba/ or something like that, just look for the samba log files to see why it can't mount it when booting.

//serverip/sharename /net smbfs username=x,password=x < Do you have ,auto, in the line of options for that?

Thank you for responding Dave, I'll try these steps as soon as I get a window of opportunity at work today and give you an update. Appreciated!

Sorry for delay, only small amount of time scheduled at work for this project. You are right, I didn't have the auto option - it's auto-mounting perfectly for me now. Thank you! I finally solved the server-to-client ping problem by correcting a typo in my client interfaces file.

I have read somewhere that you can add a 'credentials=[filename]' in the options area in fstab that would have reference to the username and password so it's not visible in fstab. When setting the security on that credentials file, what username gets the rights to the file so fstab can read it? Only the username that would need the mount rights?

Appreciate your support - helps us newbies to overcome our fear of the linux.