Fstab mount smbfs share for user noauto asking for password via GUI

Question

I'm trying to do a connection for my work computers d: from my laptop. Altough to have direct access to the disk I need to use the computers administrator account. And I would not like to save the password for the administrator account in fstab file on my laptop.

# work share
//172.16.8.2/d$         /home/user/domain/d   smbfs username=administrator,domain=domain,user,rw,noauto  0  0

This is how it looks in the terminal

$ mount ~/npn/d
Password: 

And I get the thing mounted in no time.

Now to the trouble: If I try to "click" the d "drive" in the file browser I'm met by this error box:

Unable to mount d
Password: mount error(13): Permission denied
Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g. man mount.cifs)

Logic, because the graphical interface can't throw me a password login promt like the terminal.

Is there any way for me to solve this problem, to just be able to "click" on the unmounted d drive and get a GUI passpromt thrown?

Answer 1

bodhi.zazen: I believe you are being asked the SAMBA password

Yes it's the samba password that is being asked for in the terminal. There doesn't seem to be a good solution to bringing a GUI popup to enter the SAMBA password. And since I don't want to save the password in either credential file, fstab or individual autofs files. I will live with it as it is and start a terminal and write:

mount ~/npn/d

and then enter the SAMBA password in the terminal.

Answer 2

You have two options:

1. I believe you are being asked the SAMBA password, so add in the password to the fstab entry:

   username=administrator,password=admin_samba_password,domain=domain,user,rw,noauto
   

   If you do not want the password in fstab, use a credentials file as described in this blog entry.

   Run the following commands as root, but change the path as you see fit:

   mkdir -p /path/securedir
   chmod 0700 /path/securedir
   chown root /path/securedir
   

   Then create a file /path/securedir/fileshare with the following contents:

   username=yourusername
   password=yourpass
   

   Now append credentials=/path/securedir/fileshare to your fstab entry.

2. Your other option, and the one I use, is autofs. It takes a little time to configure, but it is mounted on demand and is invisible to the end user.

Answer 3

Faced with the same problem. For me mounting a CIFS share from a NAS

Problems being faced...

1/ mount has no method of specifying a password handler (such as used by sudo, ssh, etc)

2/ Putting the password in the fstab makes it readable by any one on the system at any time!

3/ mount can be given a password as a option but that means it is on the command line and for a brief moment the password is visible to anyone on the system. But that appears the only way.

4/ mount will only accept options when it is run as root, but if "mount.cifs" is made SUID, then you don't need to run mount as root!

Current Solution.

Given "/usr/libexec/openssh/x11-ssh-askpass" available on most systems (see http://www.ict.griffith.edu.au/anthony/crypto/passwd_input.txt for alternatives). And "/etc/fstab" defines the mount point a "/mnt/cifs".

Then this works as a GUI mount command, but requires 2 passwords... your SUDO (login) password and your CIFS password.

SUDO_ASKPASS=/usr/libexec/openssh/x11-ssh-askpass sudo -A \
   mount -o "password=$(/usr/libexec/openssh/x11-ssh-askpass 'CIFS Password')" /mnt/cifs

UPDATE: If you make /sbin/mount.cifs SUID you can do away with the mount and the /etc/fstab (though you may like to keep the fstab to allow you to umount it).

/sbin/mount.cifs -o "user=username,pass=$(/usr/libexec/openssh/x11-ssh-askpass 'CIFS Password')"  //machine/share /mnt/cifs