UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I know how to mount my share via /etc/fstab automatically when the system boots but since I do not have root permission to access the /etc/fstab nor do I think that the system admin wants me to add an entry in /etc/fstab all together. So what file could I add my mount entry in?

Code:

mount -t cifs //ntserver/download -o username=vivek,password=myPassword /mnt/ntserver

.profile ??

Hi,

look at the section 'The non-superuser mounts.' of mount man pages.

see ya
fra

In short, even user-mode mounting must be prepared in advance by root.

If you do end up putting it in /etc/fstab, be sure to give it the 'noauto' option, otherwise it may try to mount it on boot and fail to boot if it can't.

Good point. I know that if there is a gui and through Gnome -- Nautilus, it will automatically mount the share if chosen. I scratch my head at that in how can you allow an automount using the GUI but not through the CLI for system who boot at run levels with GUI's.

Gnome gets away with it by nothing less than the complete subversion of PAM -- not just for mounting, but for a variety of things. It silently (and invisibly) upgrades access groups for graphical logins to give them write-permissions on audio devices, for instance. It needs hooks all over the place to do this. I'm sure there'll be a royal mess-up someday with security holes of Microsoft proportions.

If they wanted you to mount something or edit fstab, they should have given you root.

Though this still requires root access ,this shows promise, AutoFS:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Autofs


http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks... - CentOS Wiki

AutoFS appears to be more a more efficient way of conserving bandwidth as well but I have never used it before

---------- Post updated at 04:16 PM ---------- Previous update was at 04:04 PM ----------

Thanks for the replies,

Was wondering about using the noauto option. If this is used will it still mount the drive after the boot automatically, or would i still have to mount the share after login manually?

You need to have CAP_SYS_ADMIN privileges to mount something, period, end of story, no exceptions.

The 'user' option in /etc/fstab works because /bin/mount is a setuid executable, always running as root. It must check whether you're allowed to mount anything by itself, and checks against /etc/fstab, a file only modifiable by root.

gnome gets away with it by installing hooks into PAM to give it lots of permissions you're probably unaware of. It definitely needed root to install all those.

autofs gets away with it by running a system daemon with root permissions that mounts things for you. Naturally to install it you need root.

If you find any way to mount a filesystem without needing root's authority to configure or install anything, that is a bug and should be fixed.

---------- Post updated at 03:31 PM ---------- Previous update was at 03:29 PM ----------

It won't mount automatically, no.

It won't hang the system if it doesn't work, either.

I'd put @reboot /bin/mount /path/to/mountpoint in your user crontab instead, or perhaps /bin/mount /path/to/mountpoint in /etc/local.start instead if I wanted it to not depend on any user. It won't halt the boot process if mount fails in those places.