[ale] Mount a remote NTFS partition

[Michael H. Warfield]

On Wed, 2011-02-02 at 10:53 -0500, Richard Faulkner wrote: 
> Alas...I spoke too soon...Hotel California is no longer stuck in my head
> and the "solution" for 
> the Ubuntu box no longer works.  (Funny...it was working last night!) 

> [Rich scratches head...]

> Searches of the Ubuntu forum found how to do it with smbfs and how to
> edit fstab but with 
> passwords in plain text.  (I read the whole thing shaking my head
> wondering "why?")  That 
> was a long shot but will return to working on a cifs solution to
> persistently mount the remote
> NTFS share on 9.10.

Strange...  That was one of the things that frequently broke on smbfs
(persistence).

I generally try (with a vengence) to avoid hard persistent fstab mounts
over network (NFS, SMB, or anything).  Invariably leads to headaches
when a machine is down or there's some network problem.  Instead, I use
autofs that mounts the remote shares on demand and on reference and
unmounts them when not in use.  I've done this frequently with both NFS
and CIFS.  Of course, it's really a snap with NFS mounts in /net with
autofs running.  CIFS, you still need to set things up.

> For anyone who's interested, here's what I'm trying to do...all new to
> me...

> Mount \\Studio\Production to ~/Studio so that my wife (the user) can
> easily access data on 
> her production system and allow gFTP to easily see the Production share
> on a remote XP box
> as a local resource on Ubuntu.  (XP only lives in this posting because
> of the h/w used...it requires
> M$ drivers for a broadcast audio card -- no Linux equivalent available
> due to the DSP.)  It would
> be good for her to be able to write data back to the NTFS share.  (Keep
> in mind that I'm keeping 
> the Window$ box offline thus don't want to do FTP from there...)

> Here's the command I've used to attach the share:

> mount -t cifs //ip-addr-of-pc/Production /home/username/Studio -o
> username=workgroup/username,password=password

I would definitely do this with autofs.

http://www.howtoforge.com/accessing_windows_or_samba_shares_using_autofs

> This mounts the drive alright but it isn't persistent.  Last night I
> thought I had it but this morning it's a 
> different story.

> So far I've found that Ubuntu doesn't understand how to resolve the
> Window$ box by NetBIOS name 
> but Samba is running fine and resolves the workgroup and host machines
> on the workgroup as well 
> as their shares.

Ok...  First things you got to realized...

Netbios Names != DNS Names

Ubuntu and native Linux speaks DNS names.  Samba is going to use Netbios
names.  Best choice it to make sure your Netbios names are in the DNS
but you have to play by the right rules.  Netbios allows spaces and
other illegal characters in a name.  If you adhere to DNS simple names
for Netbios names, they will play together.  There is a way to set up
dynamic DNS and have DNS automatically updated with Netbios names but
that's way out of scope for this thread.

> Ubuntu does resolve by IP just fine.  (I suspect this
> is due to mappings that would be
> analogous to a host file in M$ or a service that needs to be
> installed/configured but am too new in this 
> regard to *NIX to be sure...) 

You are correct.  Ubuntu is going to look up a name in DNS.  That
includes the CIFS mounts.  If the names are in both, you are good to go.
If not, you have to use the appropriate parameter to specify the IP
address as oppose to doing a DNS lookup.

> More fun & games!  
> 
> RinL
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Faulkner <rfaulkner at 34thprs.org>
> Reply-to: rfaulkner at 34thprs.org, Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts <ale at ale.org>
> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts <ale at ale.org>
> Subject: Re: [ale] Mount a remote NTFS partition
> Date: Wed, 02 Feb 2011 09:00:37 -0500
> 
> Ahhhhhhhhhh!!!!  Now I'm gonna have that song stuck in my head all day
> long!!!
> 
> Arrgh.......  : )
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Geoffrey Myers <lists at serioustechnology.com>
> Reply-to: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts <ale at ale.org>
> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts <ale at ale.org>
> Subject: Re: [ale] Mount a remote NTFS partition
> Date: Wed, 02 Feb 2011 07:14:39 -0500
> 
> 
> Richard Faulkner wrote:
> > Thanks to all who responded to this thread.  Special thanks to Michael 
> > Warfield!!  CIFS did the trick and I have everything running the way it 
> > needs to run.  My wife's FTP client sees the share properly and she can 
> > find it where it needs to be in the fs.  A great learning curve item for 
> > one coming from M$ to *NIX.  So much further to go...but at least I have 
> > no plans of going back!  : )
> 
> You can checkout any time you like, But you can never leave!
> :)

Regards,
Mike
-- 
Michael H. Warfield (AI4NB) | (770) 985-6132 |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
   /\/\|=mhw=|\/\/          | (678) 463-0932 |  http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
   NIC whois: MHW9          | An optimist believes we live in the best of all
 PGP Key: 0x674627FF        | possible worlds.  A pessimist is sure of it!
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