Automatic connection to an SMB share under Ubuntu 22.04

Introduction

This tutorial describes how to set up an SMB share under Ubuntu 22.04 and automatically start it as a systemd service.

This tutorial does NOT describe how to provide an SMB share, but only how to connect (mount) it automatically!

The tutorial was tested on Ubuntu 22.04 (July 2023).

Example values for this tutorial:

All these values must be replaced by your own values!

Step 1 - Set up SMB share access data

First you have to log in to your server via SSH. (If you don't want to use your login user, you can also create a new user and log in with it.)

1. Move to the directory where you want to mount the SMB share using cd.
2. Enter mkdir smb-share-mount to create the folder for the SMB share.
3. Enter nano .smbcredentials and press Enter to create a new file.
4. Paste the following code into this file:

username=username-example
password=password-example

Please replace password-example with your password and username-example with the SMB share username.

5. Exit the file by pressing "Ctrl + X" and then "Y" and then "Enter".
6. Enter chmod 600 .smbcredentials to protect the access data file.

Step 2 - Prepare server

1. Enter sudo -s to get root rights.
2. Enter your password and press Enter.
3. Now enter apt update -y && apt upgrade -y && apt autoremove -y && apt install -y cifs-utils keyutils to update the server.
4. If a pink window appears, press Enter once to continue.

Step 3 - Set up SMB share

1. Enter nano /etc/systemd/system/smb-connect.service and press Enter to create a new systemd service file.
2. Paste the following code into this file:

[Unit]
Description=Automatically connect to SMB share
After=network.target

[Service]
WorkingDirectory=/root/
User=root
ExecStart=mount -t cifs -o credentials=/root/smb-share-mount/.smbcredentials //smb.example.com/user/ /root/smb-share-mount/
RemainAfterExit=true
Type=oneshot

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

3. Replace smb.example.com/user/ with the name of the server under which the SMB share is accessible.
4. Replace /root/smb-share-mount/ (x2) with the path under which the SMB share should be mounted, - This is the folder in which you created the smb-share-mount folder earlier.
5. Exit the file by pressing "Ctrl + X" and then "Y" and then "Enter".
6. Enter systemctl daemon-reload to reload the systemd daemon.
7. Enter systemctl enable smb-connect to enable the service.
8. Enter systemctl start smb-connect to start the service.
9. Enter systemctl status smb-connect to check if the service is running.

Conclusion

You have now set up an SMB share under Ubuntu 22.04 and started it as a systemd service.

Thanks for reading!

License

MIT

Copyright (c) 2023 Konstantin Protzen

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