Can't get a CIFS network drive to mount on boot

Question

I have added a share in fstab to access a network drive with all my files on... fstab looks like:

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/mmcblk0p1 /boot vfat defaults 0 2
/dev/mmcblk0p2 / ext4 defaults,noatime 0 1
//192.168.1.73/disk1 /media/disk1 cifs username=pi,password=raspberry,_netdev,uid=1000,gid=1000,iocharset=utf8, 0 0
# a swapfile is not a swap partition, so no using swapon|off from here on, use dphys-swapfile swap[on|off] for that

When I run sudo mount -a the network drive mounts successfully and I can do cd /media/disk1 then ls which correctly gives me a list of all the folders on said network drive.

However, after rebooting the pi when I cd to that location and run ls again, nothing is there. I have to manually run sudo mount -a again, which then mounts the drive.

I have seen this reported many times on other forums, and the consensus seems to be that the mounts in fstab are happening too early - before the network has been established. I've tried to implement the things I understand - but to be honest a lot of it is way over my head. I've added _netdev to the line in fstab, I've added rootdelay=10 into /boot/cmdline.txt, I've installed networkmanager... none of this has helped.

And so I turn to you, about ready to throw the pi out the window - followed by myself. Any help, much appreciated.

Answer 1

I suggest you add the mount to either the root or your user crontab.

Given that you are currently using sudo the root crontab appears to be the most appropriate.

sudo crontab -e # to edit the root crontab

Add a @reboot entry to the crontab. You need a line such as

@reboot (sleep 30; /bin/mount /media/disk1)&

That'll wait for 30 seconds before mounting the disk.

Answer 2

I also had the same issue regarding auto-mounting a network drive at boot. I tried adding mount -a command in the /etc/rc.local after editing the /etc/fstab but to no avail. The reason it doesn't work is that the network is not ready before the mount -a is executed.

As others have mentioned the issue is that fstab drives are mounted even before the network is up. In order to be sure that the network is ready during the boot, there is an option Wait for Network at Boot in raspi-config.

run

sudo raspi-config

and set the Wait for Network at Boot option to Slow wait for network connection before completing boot and reboot. Of course the boot up time may well be affected but if that's not critical, this method can be used.

After the reboot you can check that the network drive is mounted automatically: quick check through ls /media/DRIVE_NAME or df

Answer 3

Update notes, seeing that this came up on Google. I suffered the same series of frustrations mounting my Airport Time Capsule. I am running Raspberry Pi 3B+ on Rasbian Stretch released 14 March 2018 with standard GUI.

Here is my fstab code line:

//100.10.10.1/Data /mnt/timecapsule cifs username=********, password=******, vers=1.0, rw, uid=1000, iocharset=utf8, sec=ntlm 0 0

A few changes appear to have happened over time:

1. You need to add "vers=1.0" statement
2. _netdev does nothing on CFIS file system, only works on NFS file system (as noted by Gabriel Staples below)
3. "user=" and "pass=" should now be "username=" and "password=" respectively
4. Lastly, there is now a "Wait for network" box that that can be ticked in the Raspberry Pi Configuration Utility, that solved my mount at boot problem.

After 2 days of struggles, mine is now finally mounted and does so at boot !

Answer 4

You can add the _netdev and comment=systemd.automount attributes in the fstab and it is all working fine for me upon reboot. I used to face the same problem on reboot.

\\network_shared_location\directory /your_mount_location/mount_directory cifs _netdev,username=<your_username>,password=<your_password>,workgroup=<YOUR_WORKGROUP>,users,auto,user_xattr,comment=systemd.automount 0 0

Answer 5

Another trick to solve this issue is to append in the bottom of file /etc/rc.local the command:

mount -a

After reboot you can verify if it's all ok by typing the command:

df -h

and you'll see something like this:

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ df -h
File system      Dim. Usati Dispon. Uso% Montato su
/dev/root        7,2G  6,3G    584M  92% /
devtmpfs         119M     0    119M   0% /dev
tmpfs             25M  412K     25M   2% /run
tmpfs            5,0M     0    5,0M   0% /run/lock
tmpfs             49M     0     49M   0% /run/shm
/dev/mmcblk0p1    56M   20M     37M  36% /boot
//192.168.1.1/ws 466G  452G     14G  98% /mnt/winshare  <----------

Answer 6

In my case I bought a Raspberry Pi 3 and installed Raspbian Stretch, I edited my fstab with my favorite arrangement of network drives like this:

//172.30.0.54/mnt/anim /mnt/share/Z cifs  username=frieza,password=meh,uid=1000,gid=1000,vers=2.0 0 0
//172.30.0.56/share/V /mnt/share/V cifs  username=goku,password=meh,uid=1000,gid=1000,vers=2.0 0 0
//172.30.0.56/share/M /mnt/share/M cifs  username=piccolo,password=meh,uid=1000,gid=1000,vers=2.0 0 0
//172.30.0.56/share/O /mnt/share/O cifs  username=drbrief,password=meh,uid=1000,gid=1000,vers=2.0 0 0
//172.30.0.56/share/R /mnt/share/R cifs  username=vegeta,password=meh,uid=1000,gid=1000,vers=2.0 0 0

So whenever I used:

sudo mount -a

Every drive listed in fstab would mount automatically, then I added this to rc.local and several other places so that I could enjoy the content of these drives upon startup, long story short, nothing worked until I decided to add a line to the root crontab like by:

sudo crontab -e

Chose my editor (nano in y case) Then added this line at the bottom

@reboot (sleep 20;/bin/mount -a)&

Everything worked fine in my case after rebooting. Hope this helps you guys out.

NOTE:

If you run into any issues, you can always run:

service cron status

And it will give you a hint on what ran and what didn't

Answer 7

The _netdev option in /etc/fstab doesn't seem to do anything at all for cifs shares. This resource (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Fstab) seems to confirm that when it says "_netdev - this is a network device, mount it after bringing up the network. Only valid with fstype nfs".

I prefer using the /etc/rc.local file to fix this, by sleeping and then calling mount -a within it, rather than using crontab or the Wait for network at boot option in raspi-config. However, to get the /etc/rc.local fix to work, don't forget to sleep, as explained below.

What I have done to fix this problem (on my Pi3) is modify /etc/rc.local to sleep 20 seconds (by calling sleep 20) and then call mount -a. This way, even though the network is NOT connected yet when the system first reads the fstab file, so the mount fails then, I force the system to wait 20 seconds here (giving the network time to connect) then I force it to call mount -a again to mount all drives in the fstab file.

Here is what my /etc/rc.local file now looks like:

#!/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.

# Print the IP address
#GS notes: a *minimum* of sleep 10 is required for the mount below to work on the Pi 3; it failed with sleep 5, but worked with sleep 10, sleep 15, and sleep 30
sleep 20
_IP=$(hostname -I) || true
if [ "$_IP" ]; then
  printf "My IP address is %s\n" "$_IP"
  mount -a #GS: mount all drives in /etc/fstab
fi

exit 0

Done! It now works perfectly for me!

References:

1. [my answer] https://askubuntu.com/a/895124/327339
2. https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/linux/usage/rc-local.md
3. http://elinux.org/RPi_Email_IP_On_Boot_Debian - they have a similar rc.local file with a comment in it that says:

   # Print the IP address if it doesn't work ad sleep 30 before all your code
   

Answer 8

I know this is a little late reply but I had the same problem and it was to do with the network not being up when the fstab was called. I tried the crontab first and it worked ok but thought was a bit messy...

There is a great post here which runs through using a script in init.d to run the mount as on boot... it is working great for me now.