Cannot mount remote drive. I get the error: mount.cifs: bad UNC (/servername//data.xxx.xxx.ac.uk/)

Question

I am trying to access a remote drive from my PC using fstab but I get an error:

$ sudo mount -a
mount.cifs: bad UNC (/servername//data.xxx.xxx.ac.uk/)

This is how my fstab looks:

/servername//data.xxx.xxx.ac.uk/ /media/windowsshare cifs iud=myuserid,password=mypassword,iocharset=utf8,sec=ntlm  0  0

How can I fix it?

Solution 1

UNC syntax is //server/share, not /server//share/. Note double slash before the server name, one slash between the server name and the share name.

Solution 2

You have to use double slash for mounting command. Like this

sudo mount -t cifs //xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/Folder_1/ /media/usb/ -o user=admin

Comments

[Ahmet Ozturk]

Instead of that error, I now get this. "mount error: could not resolve address for servername: Unknown error

[AlexP]

You should of course use the actual name of the server and not "servername". Before trying sudo mount -a check that the name is resolvable, using for example host servername (of couse, with the actual name instead of "servername").

[Hubro]

Another note, I've always used \\server\share (backslash rather than forward slash) and it has always worked when just using fstab and mount, but it doesn't work when systemd tried to perform the mount. It throws the error "Invalid UNC path: \server\share".