Unable to mount network shares through fstab

[Jonathan Michaels]

I have several samba network shares loaded through smbfs in my fstab. A typical entry looks like this:
//nas/Pictures /home/user/Shared-Photos smbfs credentials=home/user/.credentials,rw,uid=user 0 0

The above works properly using network manager but fails to load with Wicd,

Possibly relevant info:
Wireless network is open.

Problem is repeatable: Reinstall NM, it works. Install Wicd, it fails.

Similiar report from another Wicd user was found at:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=620777

[Jonathan Michaels (jhmichaels)]

For what it's worth, I CAN mount the share AFTER boot-up with the following command:

smbmount //nas/Pictures /home/user/Shared-Photos -o username=user,password=password

[drdrewusaf (drdrewusaf)]

Ok, after trying multiple ways in the rc.local script, I came up with a work around. First off, just putting "mount /whatever/mount/point" in rc.local does not work. Forcing rc.local to sleep did not work 100% (it was a crap shoot whether or not it would mount). So here it is:

1. Make sure rc.local is executable:

sudo chmod +x /etc/rc.local

2. There are two ways to do this part, you can put the script directly into rc.local or you can make a separate script and have rc.local run it. I chose the latter simply because I prefer my rc.local script to be clean, and I don't trust if/else statements in it. I named my script shrmnt, you can name it whatever you want.

sudo gedit /usr/bin/shrmnt

Copy and paste this script. This script, first, checks to see if the drive was already mounted (maybe a newer version of Wicd has a fix). If it is mounted it'll tell you with stars - if it's not mounted, then it sleeps to give the network time to settle before mounting.
#!/bin/bash
netDrive=/YOUR/DRIVE/MOUNT/POINT
varCheck=`mount | grep " $netDrive "`

if [[ ${#varCheck} > 0 ]]
then
   echo "*"
   echo "* The network drive $netDrive is already mounted! *"
   echo "*"
elif [[ ${#varCheck} == 0 ]]
then
   sleep 10
   mount $netDrive
fi

Save the file!

3. Next edit rc.local to run it.

sudo gedit /etc/rc.local

Put the command (fully qualified, just in case) above "exit 0". My rc.local looks like this (don't mind the modprobe...just tethering on sprint for free :-) ) :
#!/bin/sh -e
#
# rc.local
#
# This script is executed at the end of each multiuser runlevel.
# Make sure that the script will "exit 0" on success or any other
# value on error.
#
# In order to enable or disable this script just change the execution
# bits.
#
# By default this script does nothing.

/sbin/modprobe ipaq vendor=0x0bb4 product=0x00cf

/usr/bin/shrmnt

exit 0

There you have it, a perfectly good and probably too-complicated work around.

Attached is the script premade - just edit the mount point.

Drew

[drdrewusaf (drdrewusaf)]

Found out, on my wife's laptop, that the network connection comes up much slower than mine. Instead of adjusting the sleep time, I redid the entire script. I'm kind of new to writing complex scripts, so it didn't occur to me to use functions to get it to loop.

#!/bin/bash
netDrive=/media/share450
varCheck=`mount | grep " $netDrive "`

mnt () {
   mount $netDrive
   check
}
check () {
if [[ ${#varCheck} > 0 ]]
then
   echo "*"
   echo "* The network drive $netDrive is already mounted! *"
   echo "*"
elif [[ ${#varCheck} == 0 ]]
then
   sleep 10
   mnt
fi
}

check

[drdrewusaf (drdrewusaf)]

Didn't do a good check on that...now it will only run 10 times (instead of infinite loop).

[Adam Blackburn (adamblackburn)]

1.5.0 uses scripts run as root, so you should be able to have Wicd connect with that.