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Mounting a Windows Active Directory Share from Linux

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by faradhi

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I have a Linux From Scratch box that provides two functions. One is an internal blog using WordPress. The other is OCS inventory.

I would like to backup both. Since they use MySQL databases and simple files this should be fairly simple with a script.

However, our backup server is a Windows 2003 server running BackupExec. Since I have only the two minor apps running on the linux server, I do not want to purchase a Linux client for BackupExec. Rather, I would just like to mount a share on one of the Windows servers and copy the backups using a script.

I am not concerned with a complete backup because I they are minor apps and the expected recovery time has been set for over a week in the case of a disaster.

My question is there a way to mount a Windows Network Share without installing Samba?

I would rather not install Samba and have another app I have to track for patches if I do not have to.

8 replies

by Former member

Yes, using the "smbfs" package (in Debian, Ubuntu, et'al) you can mount a windows share just as you would an NFS mountpoint. If you are using RHEL, SLES or anything non-Debian, look for the smbfs source on the web and compile.

Once smbfs is installed just type (as root) smbmount and press enter at the command prompt for the command syntax (an example is at the end of the quick help) or just read the utilities man page.

by faradhi

I was hoping that was not the case. But I will install it if need be.

by Former member

Be sure we are meaning the same thing, the smbfs package (in Debian) is not the same thing as the entire Samba package. If the Linux distribution you are using doe snot have a seperate smbfs package, you can elect not to configure or enable the entire Samba package so you do not take the memory, process and security hit on the host.

by faradhi

LFS does everything from source so I am looking at SMBFS' replacement CIFS VFS.

Thanks for the help.

by faradhi

So installing samba to get smbmount seems to be my only recourse.

Thanks for your help.

by Former member

Yes, without the separate package just for smbfs (smbmount utility) your stuck with just Samba itself. No problem though, just do not configure for sharing any local data or printers, be sure that samba is not configured for run level 3,4,5 in init.

by faradhi

I had to recompile the kernel with CIFS support and then use the mount.cifs command to finally mount the Active Directory share. I believe that mount.cifs was available after the Kernel recompile, please correct me if I am wrong, before installing Samba. However, I may be incorrect so if mount.cifs is not available I suggest installing Samba.

smbmount gave the error SMB signing is mandatory and we have disabled it.

mount -t cifs returned the error cifs_mount failed w/return code = -22

Thanks to kam@ for the direction. Without it, I would not have found the solution.

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