How to mount a sambashare with autofs and cifs

Question

I'm trying to automount a sambashare as CIFS, as documented here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Autofs#CIFS

This seems so simple, I'm running out of things to google. It's probably something very obvious. Let me speak in commands:

sudo apt-get install autofs

sudo nano /etc/auto.master.d/myserver.autofs

files -fstype=cifs,rw ://server/files

sudo automount -f -v

Starting automounter version 5.0.7, master map /etc/auto.master
using kernel protocol version 5.02
syntax error in map near [ files -fstype=cifs,rw : ]
no mounts in table

I didn't do a whole lot, but I still did something wrong. How do I get this working?

---

edit @Jos

updated myserver.autofs:

/media/server/files -fstype=cifs,rw ://server/files

Output from sudo automount -f -v:

Starting automounter version 5.0.7, master map /etc/auto.master
using kernel protocol version 5.02
:
/
/
/
file map /etc/-fstype=cifs not found
mounted indirect on /media/server/files with timeout 300, freq 75 seconds
statemachine:1363: got unexpected signal 28!

Now we have a directory in /media! But it's empty.

Solution 1

I was having a similar problem until I figured out reading a lot of pages. Try this:

1. Make a sub-directory for automount in /media like /media/auto (I wanted to automount two different servers/files here and /media is available for other stuffs)

2. Edit /etc/auto.master with:

   /media/auto /etc/auto.cifs-shares --timeout=500
   

   (You can give another name to file "auto.cifs-shares" and change timeout to another value if you want to)

3. Create a file for store your config (as I wrote above I've written in /etc/auto.cifs-shares)

   files --fstype=cifs,credentials=/home/your_user/.credentials,dir_mode=0755,file_mode=0755,uid=your_user,rw ://server/files
   

   (if you don't give credentials it will automount as anonymous, it depends on permission)

4. You have to restart service for having changes taking effect:

   service autofs restart
   

5. That's it! Next try:

   ls /media/auto/files
   

(should give you what you want)

Solution 2

Try inserting a direct map line in "/etc/auto.master" - something like:

/-  /etc/auto.data

Where "/etc/auto.data" contains the "direct" mount point and your cifs mount info that you previously had in "myserver.autofs" - i.e.:

/media/server/files -fstype=cifs,rw ://server/files

I am new to autofs and was not able to get an "indirect" mapping working for a cifs mount but the above "direct" mapping method works for me.

Comments

[Panther]

post your other configuration files

[Jos]

Perhaps the mount point needs to contain the full path? (i.e. /path/to/files -fstype=cifs,rw ://server/files)

[Redsandro]

@bodhi.zazen such as? auto.master contains +dir:/etc/auto.master.d which is empty.

[Redsandro]

@Jos ok that seems to help, but I think the line is different from what was expected. It searches for the -fstype flag as if it's searching for a binary. I think the docs are outdated.

[Jos]

Hm. According to the most recent man page it should be correct as stated.

[Sridhar Sarnobat]

Until reading your post I didn't notice that direct and indirect mappings were different! Now I've got something working.

[Tom]

Should that be -fstype instead of --fstype?