It’s usually quite easy to connect to a Windows File Share on desktop versions of Linux however Linux servers often run with no Graphical User Interface (GUI). They also often run for months, even years, at a time with no user intervention. This makes connecting to a Windows File Share a little bit more complicated but not impossible.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding you will need to have installed:

• Samba
• Samba Client (smbclient)
• CIFS Utilities (cifs-utils)

To install these on Ubuntu Server Linux, run:

sudo apt install samba smbclient cifs-utils -y

Credentials

To prevent having to put a username and password details in every time the connection is established, create a credential files:

sudo touch /root/.CREDFILENAME

Open the file and enter the following contents:

username=SHAREUSERNAME
password=SHAREPASSWORD

To secure the credentials file restrict access to only the root user, run:

sudo chmod 600 /root/.CREDFILENAME

Mounting

Create a folder to mount the Windows File Share:

sudo mkdir /FOLDER/AS/MOUNTPOINT

Automatically

Configure the mount point by adding details to /etc/fstab:

//SHARESERVER/SHARENAME /FOLDER/AS/MOUNTPOINT cifs credentials=/root/.CREDFILENAME, 0 0

This will automatically mount the Windows File Share at start up without requiring login or any user interaction.

Manually

Mount

To mount the newly configured Windows File Share without have to reboot, run:

sudo mount -a

Unmount

To unmount the Windows File Share, run:

sudo umount /FOLDER/AS/MOUNTPOINT

Tested on Ubuntu Server Linux 22.04