Mount Windows/Samba Shares with Autofs in CentOS 6/7/8

Samba and Windows that are used on-demand should be mounted with autofs.  The system will mount or remount the share automatically as needed.

1. Create /etc/smbpasswd to store the credentials for the user accessing the share

   domain=domain.int
   username=storage
   password=p@ssw0rd

2. Set the file permissions to 600 to prevent non-root users from viewing the password

   # chmod 600 /etc/smbpasswd

3. Install autofs and cifs-utils

   # yum install autofs cifs-utils

4. Create a folder that will serve as the root for mounts

   # mkdir /mnt/smb

5. Add the folder and corresponding config file to the end of /etc/auto.master

   /mnt/smb /etc/auto.smb.top

6. Add the following to /etc/auto.smb/top

   *       -fstype=autofs,-Dhost=& file:/etc/auto.smb.sub

7. Add the following to /etc/auto.smb.sub

   * -fstype=cifs,credentials=/etc/smbpasswd,uid=99,gid=99,file_mode=0664,dir_mode=0775,nounix,iocharset=iso8859-15 ://${host}/&

   1. Replace the UID and GID values with the user the share will be mounted as
   2. file_mode is the permissions assigned to share files
   3. dir_mode is the permissions assigned to share folders
8. Enable and start the autofs service
   CentOS 7/8
   

   # systemctl enable autofs
   # systemctl start autofs

   CentOS 6
   

   # chkconfig autofs on
   # service autofs start

9. Test accessing a share.  It may take a couple of tries to mount.

   # ls /mnt/smb/<server>/<share>

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