CIFS - Mount Synology Network Attached Storage (NAS)

The Common Internet File System (cifs) is a Linux implementation of the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol developed by Microsoft. It is a secure protocol.

If cifs-utils is not installed, install it:

sudo apt install cifs-utils

sudo mount -t cifs -o username=NAS_user_name,domain=WORKGROUP,password=NAS_passwd,vers=3.0,rw,uid=1000,gid=1000 //192.168.xxx.xxxx/shared_folder /home/user_name/mounting_point_directory

• There are two forward slashes before the the IP address of the NAS (i.e. //192.168.xxx.xxxx).
• You must specify the full path from the root to where to mount the shared directory (ie /home/user_name/mounting_point_directory). You cannot use ~/mounting_point_directory. You can specify any directory as the mounting point. Most examples, create an empty mnt directory and use mnt as the mounting point directory.
• If you have characters such as $,%, etc., in you username or password, surround them with single quotes!
• If you leave out uid and gid, you will NOT have write permission on the network files.
• If you specify the wrong uid and gid, you will NOT have write permission on the network files. Use id -u and id -g to obtain the user and group id's. Bash has environmental $USER and shell ${UID} variables for the user, but not for the Group ID.
• If you leave out password=NAS_passwd. The system will then prompt you for the password. However, if you leave out the username, the system will prompt you for the password of 'root'.
• If you put your mount command line in a script file, then use "sudo chmod o-r <script_file_name>" to prevent other users from being able to read your script file and obtain your NAS_username and NAS_password.