Permanently mount a CIFS share on Linux

Install the required packages

You will need to install the cifs-utils package to mount a network drive on an Ubuntu Linux system.

sudo apt-get install -y cifs-utils

For a Red Hat based system you will also need the cifs-utils package, installed by dnf

sudo dnf install -y cifs-utils

Create a mount point

Create a mount point for the CIFS share. eg.

sudo mkdir /srv/cifs/<share>      # where '<share>' is the name of the share you want mounted

Create a credentials file

sudo vim /etc/credentials.<share>   # where '<share>' is the name of the share you want mounted

Add the following contents to the credentials file, updating with your userid/password details to access your share.

username=<shareuser>
password=<sharepassword>

Make sure the credentials file is only visible to root

sudo chown root:root /etc/credentials.<share>      # where '<share>' is the name of the share you want mounted
sudo chmod 600 /etc/credentials.<share>

Add the mount to /etc/fstab

To mount the network drive permanently, you need to add an entry to the /etc/fstab file to ensure the share is mounted automatically when the system boots.

Open the /etc/fstab file in a text editor and add the following line:

//<ip address of your cifs server>/<share> /srv/cifs/<share> cifs credentials=/etc/credentials.<share> 0 0

Testing the mount

sudo mount -a
df -h

This should show the CIFS share mounted at the specified mount point.