Mount remote Windows share under QNAP

I use my QNAP as backup stations and this for 99% of operations I mount its shares under my Windows. Once, for some non-typical backup operation, I had to do something exactly opposite — mount remote Windows share under QNAP. Since I’m quite Linux newbie, I had to wrote this down for future reference.

Before you start, create a directory that will work as mount point to your Windows share:

[code language=”shell”]
mkdir /share/win
[/code]

If you search the Internet with query like this post title, you may find many wrong (outdated?) solutions that doesn’t work on QNAP

[code language=”shell”]
mount -t smbfs -o username=user,password=pass //192.168.1.11/Files /share/win
[/code]

and end with for example:

[code language=”shell”]
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on //192.168.1.11/Files,
missing codepage or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog – try
dmesg | tail or so
[/code]

Finally I found this guide, which explained that smbfs is outdated and cifs should be used instead. So correct command would be:

[code language=”shell”]
mount -t cifs //192.168.1.11/Files -o username=vivek,password=myPassword /share/win
[/code]

This works fine, with a small problem. You have now R/W (full) access from your QNAP to your Windows share, even though you (probably) provided wrong username and password! I have no bloody idea, how can this be? And how isn’t that a strong vioation of security? But the facts are brutal — someone inside your network can gain a full access to my files only, if he or she knows the IP address and Windows share name?

I’ve checked that it doesn’t work without username and password:

[code language=”shell”]
mount -t cifs //192.168.1.11/Files /share/win
mount -t cifs //192.168.1.4/Backup /backup/remote/win
[/code]

resulting with above mentioned error message. But works fine with any username and any password!

To unmount such share, use umount command with either your mount point or destination Windows share:

[code language=”shell”]
umount /share/win
umount //192.168.1.11/Files
[/code]

Only make sure that you’re not inside it (in any session) or you can get “device is busy” error. If you left that share and still can unmount it, use either umount -f (force) or umount -l (lazy) method.