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Converting MC Win Setup To Linux, Synology

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Zhillsguy:
An acquaintance of mine has a Synology server with a Windows share set up with all of his music on it, with a dedicated Windows laptop to play music (only) from the share using MC. He uses an I-Pad w/JRemote to control the laptop player, never touching the laptop unless reboot or other action is needed.

He is currently having issues with the little W10 laptop (good ol' updates, etc), and I would like to eventually convert his laptop to Linux for long term stability.

I am relatively new to Linux but have successfully installed Mint 18 and Ubuntu with MC a few times. I have  researched connecting with Windows shares via SMB, but can't seem to find a user friendly way to do it, especially for permanent connection.

He is a computer novice and had the server and laptop set up by other folks. If any changes to the server (such as share type) are needed I am hoping documentation is available for passwords, etc.

Any advice for either accessing Windows shares using Mint permanently, or would it be easier to possibly convert the Synology share config to type NFS, CIFS, or other for Linux access?

Thanks.

mwillems:
First, SMB shares are essentially CIFS shares (one is an implementation of the other), and they work perfectly fine on Linux; no need to alter a working system.  To permanently mount a NAS SMB share you want to add a single line to the client computer's /etc/fstab file.  I use this to mount SMB shares on my linux boxes on boot and it works a treat.  In outline you want a line like this


--- Code: ---//ip.address.of.NAS/share_name   /local/mount_point   cifs   noauto,x-systemd.automount,credentials=/home/your_user/samba-credentials  0  0


--- End code ---

To explain the syntax a little, the line is composed of six entries separated by spaces. The first entry is what is being mounted (i.e. the ip address of the NAS and the name of the share).  The second entry is where it's being mounted locally (i.e. something like /mnt/media).  You need to make sure the local mountpoint exists first (i.e. if /mnt/media is your mountpoint, make sure the directory /mnt/media already exists).  The third entry is the filesystem type of the mount (cifs). 

The fourth entry contains options separated by commas with no spaces after the commas.  These options automatically mount the share, but wait until something tries to access the share before mounting it.  This will make sure that the system doesn't try to mount the share before the network is up (for example), but is seamless to programs (i.e. the first program trying to access it after boot might experience a very brief delay on a normal network connection).  The last option points to a file containing the login credentials for the share.  If the share has no credentials (i.e. a guest share) remove that option.  If the share does have credentials, put your user's name in the path, and make a file in the user's home directory called "samba-credentials." In the file, put two lines like this, substituting the real credentials


--- Code: ---username=your_username
password=your_password

--- End code ---

The last two entries tell the system not to try and assess the validity of the share and not to wait for it to mount during boot.

There are other ways to do it, but this way is (in my experience) ironclad, and always puts the share in a predictable location on boot.

Here's some additional reference:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fstab

imugli:
In all my years tinkering with Linux, that's the best explanation of how to mount a share folder I've ever read. Awesome stuff.

Zhillsguy:
Hear! Hear!

Thanks mwillems! I'll give it a shot at home tonight on my system. You folks are just plain awesome.....

mwillems:
Thanks for the kind words guys. 


--- Quote from: imugli on May 19, 2017, 08:39:50 am ---In all my years tinkering with Linux, that's the best explanation of how to mount a share folder I've ever read. Awesome stuff.

--- End quote ---

In defense of your years of tinkering, the systemd automount option has only been around on most distros for three or four years. So this method didn't exist until recently (at least in Linux terms)  ;D

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