Mouting CIFS shares on a Linux/UNIX box

Occasionally, there is the need to access files from a remote host which uses a diferent operating system or is located in a different network. The CIFS (Common Internet File System) is a sharing protocol that lets users share files across different systems.

On a Linux/UNIX box we can mount our shared folder as follows:

$ sudo mount -t cifs //remoteserver/shared /mnt/shared/ -o username=myusername,password=mypassword --verbose

where:

• -t cifs is the filesystem type (cifs in our case)

• //remoteserver/shared is our remote host ('shared' is the shared folder)

• /mnt/shared/ is the local folder that will be mounted

• -o username=myusername,password=mypassword are the authentication credentials

Disclaimer: You might need to install CIFS utilities before attempting to run the above command.