Permanently Mount Network Drive with Samba

Setting Up a Network Shared Folder[]

Most of this information is from here. First we need to install Samba

sudo apt-get install samba

sudo apt-get install samba-common-bin

Set a password for Samba

sudo smbpasswd -a user_name

where "user_name" should be replaced with your username (maybe pi?).

Let's assume that your the folder you'd like to share is at /home/user_name/shared_folder. We need to edit one file:

sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

Add the following the end of the file:

[shared_folder]
path = /home/user_name/shared_folder
available = yes
valid users = user_name
read only = no
browseable = yes
public = yes
writable = yes

where again, "user_name" should be replaced with your username.

Now restart the Samba server.

sudo service samba restart

To access your shared folder on another network computer, type

smbclient //host_IP/shared_folder

This will then prompt for the Samba login credentials. If successful, you'll get a prompt that says

smb: \>

Type dir to list the contents of the share drive. If this works, you've successfully accessed the shared folder, and your Samba server is working properly.

Mounting a Network Shared Folder[]

First you'll need to create a folder where you'll mount the network share.

sudo mkdir /mnt
sudo mkdir /mnt/mydrivename

You'll also want to change the permissions on the new mount folder

sudo chmod 775 /mnt/mydrivename

This combination (775) provides read, write, execute permissions to all the current user and group, and only read, execute permissions to the rest of the world. Here's a link showing various chmod configurations.

To mount the drive, type

sudo mount -t cifs -o username=XXX,password=YYY //host_IP/shared_folder /mnt/mydrivename

Here, of course, replace "XXX" with the Samba username, "YYY" with the Samba password, "host_IP" with the IP address (or host name) that's sharing the folder, "shared_folder" with the actual name of the shared folder in the Samba server's /etc/samba/smb.conf, and "/mnt/mydrivename" with the location of the folder where your want to mount the drive.

If you're successful, you should be able to browse the contents of the network drive.

dir /mnt/mydrivename

Automount Network Shared Drive on Boot[]

To mount the shared folder automatically on boot, we simply need to modify one line of /etc/fstab.

sudo nano /etc/fstab

At the end of the list, add a line with the following information, separated by tabs:

//host_IP/shared_folder   /mnt/mydrivename   cifs   username=XXX,password=YYY   0   0

Where again, you should replace "XXX" with the Samba username, "YYY" with the Samba password, "host_IP" with the IP address (or host name) that's sharing the folder, "shared_folder" with the actual name of the shared folder in the Samba server's /etc/samba/smb.conf, and "/mnt/mydrivename" with the location of the folder where your want to mount the drive.

Here's an example of my /etc/fstab file:

When you reboot, you should be able to go directly to your newly-mounted drive.

Mounting Windows Share on Linux[]

To share a Windows folder to a Linux computer, I kindly refer you to this great tutorial:

http://www.howtogeek.com/176471/how-to-share-files-between-windows-and-linux/