r3dux.org

When you connect to a NAS in Windows, it will often helpfully remember the username and password of the NAS account it got access through. Forever. So, if you want to log into the NAS as a different user, well – tough. Windows already has a working set of credentials, and by jingo it’s gonna use them. The fix? From the command prompt, enter:

net use * /delete /yes

This will get rid of all connected share credentials, however you may want to just get rid of the credentials for a specific share. If so, you can use:

net use \\YOUR-SHARE-LOCATION /delete /yes

For example, the get rid of the credentials for the “Code” share on my NAS:

net use \\ETHERNET_BD\Code /delete /yes

Now, to map the share to a drive and give it the credentials YOU want Windows to use, go with:

net use DRIVE-LETTER: \\YOUR-SHARE-LOCATION NAS-USER-PASSWORD /user:NAS-USER-NAME

So, if I wanted to map the Code share of my NAS to the Z: drive, and access it with a user called bob who has a password MyClevahPass123, I’d use:

net use Z: \\ETHERNET_BD\Code MyClevahPass123 /user:bob

Done & dusted.

Please Note: The credentials you supply must be the username/password of the user the SHARE knows to grant access to, not just your own Windows username/password. Just clarifying =D

Apparently CIFS is the new Samba, so to mount your NAS via CIFS instead of Samba, read this, then change the fstab line to:

//<YOUR-NAS-IP>/<NAME-OF-NAS-SHARE> /<WHERE-YOU-WANT-TO-MOUNT-THE-NAS> cifs credentials=/root/.credentials,rw,auto,uid=<YOUR-UID-NUMBER-OR-USER-ACCOUNT-NAME>,gid=<YOUR-GID-NUMBER-OR-GROUP-NAME> 0 0

i.e. For me it’s:

//192.168.1.100/Share /mnt/Share cifs credentials=/root/.credentials,rw,auto,uid=r3dux,gid=r3dux 0 0

You might notice reference to a .credentials file above. You need to create this!!

The format of the credentials file [you can call it anything & place it anywhere - just make sure you point to it in the fstab lines(s)] is:

username=YOUR-NAS-USER-NAME
password=YOUR-NAS-PASWORD

So stick the above two lines in a file, substituting appropriately for the accounts and passwords on your NAS, then sudo chmod 600 it and remount the filesystem with sudo mount -a.

Job’s a good ‘un!

Update: Don’t forget – you’ll need to have samba, smbfs and cifs-utils installed for this to work! So go nuts with:

sudo apt-get install samba smbfs cifs-utils

First, get samba with the following command: sudo apt-get install samba smbfs

Now, create a folder to use as your mount point on your linux drive (I’m using /mnt/NAS – you can use whatever you’d like): sudo mkdir /mnt/NAS

Then edit your /etc/fstab file with: sudo gedit /etc/fstab

On my NAS I have two separate shares, one of which is called (unimaginatively enough) Share, so I’m going to add lines to /etc/fstab in the following format:

# Mount NAS share
//IP-OF-YOUR-NAS/NAS-SHARE-NAME /SHARE-MOUNT-POINT smbfs username=USER-NAME-OF-NAS-USER,password=PASSWORD-OF-NAS-USER,uid=YOUR-UID-NUMBER,gid=YOUR-GID-NUMBER 0 0

So  -  for my own personal setup, and because I’ve already created a username and password on the NAS [via the NAS' web interface - available at http://IP-OF-YOUR-NAS] called r3dux, I’d put:

# Mount NAS share
//192.168.1.100/Share /mnt/NAS smbfs username=r3dux,password=MyPasswordHere,uid=1000,gid=1000 0 0

There are other ways where you don’t have to put your password in plaintext in the fstab file, but as long as you’ve got it set to read/write only by the root account, no one else can even look at the file to read the password. To set permissions that way, just use: sudo chmod 600 /etc/fstab

Which gives read and write permissions to root, but denies groups and any other users any access whatsoever (even just looking at!)

Job done.

Update: When mounting a NAS there are two user acounts you’re using: 1.) Your linux user account which goes in the uid and gid fields, and 2.) The NAS user account (which is set up from the NAS’ web interface) which goes into the username and password fields.

So if you want to have write access to the NAS, then you’ll need to set up a user account from the NAS’ web interface | Users sections, and mount the NAS as the user the NAS knows about with required privileges. In the fstab line above we’re mounting with user (uid) and group (gid) permissions set to 1000, that is user id 1000 (the id number of the first user on a linux system) [your user id can be looked up in /etc/passwd] and group id 1000 (i.e. the first user on a linux system [in my case my own r3dux group] – your group id can be looked up in /etc/group) – if you want to use other users/group to mount as, feel free.

Update 2: Forgot to mention that this will mount the NAS on reboot, to force a mount using the fstab details you’ve just entered, simply run the command sudo mount -a

Update 3: Fixed the above uid/gid mentions to NOT say anything about linux file permissions – it’s user and group identifiers to mount the NAS by, and NOT standard linux file permissions, mea culpa – fixed.