Automount a Guest CIFS Share

CIFS installation

sudo apt-get install cifs-utils

On older systems:

sudo apt-get install smbfs

Mounting unprotected (guest) network folders

First, let’s create the mount directory. You will need a separate directory for each mount.

sudo mkdir /media/windowsshare

Then edit your /etc/fstab file (with root privileges) to add this line:

//servername/sharename /media/windowsshare cifs guest,uid=1000,iocharset=utf8 0 0

Where

  • guest indicates you don’t need a password to access the share,

  • uid=1000 makes the Linux user specified by the id the owner of the mounted share, allowing them to rename files,

  • iocharset=utf8 allows access to files with names in non-English languages. This doesn’t work with shares of devices like the Buffalo Tera Station, or Windows machines that export their shares using ISO8895-15.

After you add the entry to /etc/fstab type:

sudo mount -a

This will (re)mount all entries listed in /etc/fstab.

Resource: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MountWindowsSharesPermanently