Samba question

[Bob George]

"Bob Cober" <cplusplus@home.com> wrote:

> [root@devlap1 /root]# mount -t smbfs -o username=rgc
//192.168.1.200/downloads /mnt/bobpc
> [...]
> [root@devlap1 /root]# mount -t smbfs -o username=rgc //cx267762-k/download
/mnt/bobpc

Not to nitpick, but did you use either "download" or "downloads" in both
cases? I notice they're different.

There can be interesting interactions with WINS browsing and DNS in mixed
environments. When I use the server name (server is Win2K Pro), it works
with no problem, but when I use the IP address, I get a couple of warnings
like:

28129: session request to 172.16.17.253 failed (Called name not present)
28129: session request to 172 failed (Called name not present)

The mount does work, but I get these messages. Apparently, this is due to
differences in how Win2K and Samba work (a search turned up a number of
references like
http://lists.samba.org/pipermail/samba-ntdom/2000-October/048916.html ) A
possibility is that "cx267762-k" is resolved in DNS but the IP address isn't
(presumably cx267762-k is your external name, but 192.168.1.200 doesn't
resolve in DNS). In my case, the server name IS resolvable via DNS.  What is
the netbios name of the Windows box? Something like "smbmount
//netbiosname/download /mnt/bobpc -o username=rgc,ip=192.168.1.200" might
work, or better make sure netbiosname is resolved via DNS.

> Second question:
> If I want to mount this share automatically, can I put it it /etc/fstab?

Yes. Here's an entry from mine:

//server/backups /mnt/backups    smbfs   username=backups,password=password
0    0

The only problem I've noted is in the options field. I don't want this to
mount automatically at boot, but if I put "noauto" in the options, I get
error messages at boot time. Other than that, it works quite well and I use
Samba in place of NFS to keep life simple.

Let us know if this helps!

- Bob