Permissions issue with fstab CIFS mount but not when using mount command

Question

I want to mount a Windows share using CIFS on my Ubuntu 17.04 machine. If I use the mount command below it works fine, and I can access the Windows share:

sudo mount -t cifs //servername/sharename /home/myuser/mediafolder -o credentials=/home/myuser/.smbcredentials,dir_mode=0777,file_mode=0777

If I attempt to make this permanent using the following entry in /etc/fstab I get a permissions error when I try to access the mount point at /home/myuser/mediafolder :

//servername/sharename /home/myuser/mediafolder cifs credentials=/home/myuser/.smbcredentials,gid=1000,uid=1000,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0 0 0

Why am I denied permissions with the 2nd approach?

Solution

I finally found the solution - this works in /etc/fstab:

//server/share /media/localdir cifs credentials=/home/myuser/.smbcredentials,,uid=1000,gid=1000 0 0

Comments

[guiverc]

just a thought - does root have read access to your credentials file (you're not logged in at boot; it'll be root that tries to mount the samba share & thus needs to read the credentials file)

[guiverc]

probably a better guess.. don't mount to ~/mediafolder, but mount instead to /home/mediafolder and try it. (I forget where I read this; but as I recall there was a reason you couldn't mount to a home/user directory anymore documented in a samba updates years ago if my memory serves me)

[Ian M]

Yes root does have access to my .smbcredentials file. I tried mounting to a /home/media/* folder instead but get the same error - "ls: cannot open directory '/home/Media/Videos': Permission denied"

[guiverc]

did you sudo chmod a+rw /home/Media -R (or whatever permissions you want) before you tried to access it; as I'm assuming you created it with a 'sudo mkdir` & thus it'll be 'root' owned. Also I hope you didn't include a * in your mount point, nor a user directory; just a directory you created first (i used media as example instead of your mediafolder).

[Ian M]

I used chmod -R 777. I use the same folder when mounting from the command line and don't get permissions issues, so I'm guessing there isn't a permissions issue with that folder?

[Ian M]

...and no I used "/home/media/videos"

[guiverc]

last thought (which maybe applies if you encrypt your /home) - to try /media (or a directory not in your /home partition). I had hoped you'd use a directory inside /home (/home/media) as it was as a directory (not subdirectory) I recalled in samba doco).

[Ian M]

Still no luck :0(

[guiverc]

try dropping your options (exclude credentials); if it works add them back slowly. (really obvious stuff is all I got; a vers= change was made to samba but shouldn't affect you)

[Ian M]

Still no luck. I've also discovered that if I run the mount commands in rc.local (i.e. at startup) - the same mount commands that work fine if I execute them in a terminal window - I also get the "permission denied" error when I try to access the mounted folder. It seems that the context in which the mount is being done is creating the permissions issue. ????