How to access a Windows share via Linux?

Question

I've a windows shared folder which I can access by typing \\share\files\ in "run".

I need to use that in Ubuntu. So I added \\share\files\ /mnt/share/ cifs guest,uid=0,iocharset=utf8 0 0 in /etc/fstab.
And then issued mount -a. I got directory not resolvable error mount error: could not resolve address for share: Unknown error.

I'm pretty new here, can you please help me?

Edit 1: I tried adding //share/files/ /mnt/share/ cifs guest,uid=0,iocharset=utf8 0 0 in /etc/fstaband issuing mount -a command and got same error.

I used id -u and got 0, used that in uid=0.

Edit 2

I used IP (//192.168.1.222/files/ /mnt/share/ cifs guest,uid=0,iocharset=utf8 0 0) instead of directory path and got the following error message

Permission denied
Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g. man mount.cifs)

I think that should be all forward slashes? See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/samba#Add_Share_to_.2Fetc.2Ffstab — Brian Z, Oct 04 '14 at 03:54
Related (but probably not really a duplicate): Proper fstab entry to mount a samba share on boot? — Eliah Kagan, Oct 04 '14 at 04:07
I just tried using forward slashes with same error. Any other idea? — IFightCode, Oct 04 '14 at 04:39
Have you checked (using ping perhaps) that you can resolve share from that PC? — agc93, Oct 04 '14 at 05:11
You can ping the IP, but can you ping by name? In other words, can your machine resolve the name share to the corresponding IP address? — Gord Thompson, Oct 04 '14 at 07:46
it looks like a password is required (no guest allowed), is that true? did you ever enter a (remembered) password in windows. In that case you need to have a credentials file let me know. Is it a NAS? — Jacob Vlijm, Oct 04 '14 at 07:58
No, using any windows machine, I can access without using any password. Not sure if that's because of using same workgroup. — IFightCode, Oct 04 '14 at 08:02
Is the Guest account enabled on the Windows machine? If not, then you will need to provide credentials for this to work. If the Guest account is not enabled and you can connect to the share from another Windows machine without supplying credentials then in that case you are (implicitly) using pass-through authentication. — Gord Thompson, Oct 04 '14 at 08:11
Can you connect to the share from the Ubuntu system by using smbclient? Might be easier to troubleshoot that way first before you try to mount. — Brian Z, Oct 04 '14 at 09:11
Actually guest account wasn't activated, so the issues were arisen. Thanks guys for helping me. — IFightCode, Oct 04 '14 at 16:13

Jacob Vlijm · Accepted Answer · 2014-10-04T09:22:54.787

To mount a share via fstab, you should:

create a mount point (directory) to mount the share into. I am not sure if /mnt/share/ exists?
use forward slash
add the ip address of the share before the share name in the fstab file.
if not installed already: install cifs utils
for a guest account (unprotected share), you should use guest,uid=1000 as user id, to make the guest owner.
to enter a password protected share, you need to set the user id to the share's user name and the reference to a credentials file (see example below)

As an example, my line in the fsatb file looks like (the \040 is an escape for the space):

//192.168.0.104/werkmap_documenten/documenten\040Jacob /home/jacob/Netwerkmap cifs auto,iocharset=utf8,uid=jacob,gid=users,credentials=/root/.cifscredentials,file_mode=0775,dir_mode=0775 0 0

I updated question, can you please check one more time? – IFightCode Oct 04 '14 at 07:55 — IFightCode, Oct 04 '14 at 07:55

How to access a Windows share via Linux?

1 Answers1