How can I mount a NAS share permanently?

[ianp5a]

Hi I'm looking for an easy way to backup my stuff to a NAS attached to my home LAN.
The NAS share is visible in Dolphin and can be accessed by several programs. But with most backup programs I've tried you can only back up or synchronise to mounted locations. So now I'm looking, as always, for an easy not IT way to mount the NAS shares to my PC permanently, so that any scheduled backup program can use it without me having to connect it each time.
I tried the application Smb4K which scanned and found shares and mounted them automatically. Great. But very often, after boot-up, it didn't connect. It didn't say why. Another problem was it needed to be always running and visible in the task bar. Does it need to?
So I'm looking for a setting or application that can set up the automatic mount. A way that is easy for non IT people please. I suspect I'm not he only one who backs up to a NAS.

[oshunluvr]

Any "permanent" mounting should be done in /etc/fstab. Depending on your NAS (you didn't say which NAS product or if you built it yourself), CIFS (aka SAMBA) or NFS mounts are usually available. NFS is generally preferred because it's more reliable and quicker. CIFS is only required for Windows clients. Most NAS support both I believe.

So the answer is you don't need any application to mount your NAS, you just need to use the proper Linux tools already provided. Begin with your NAS documentation and see if it supports NFS or only SAMBA. Then install smbclient and/or nfs-common packages. Then make a mount point (a directory) to your liking. The "standard" location for a mount point is under /mnt/ but that's not required. Once you've done that, it's a matter of composing a mount line and adding it to /etc/fstab.

Generally, an fstab mount line would look like:

//<NAS IP ADDRESS or HOSTNAME>/<SHARED FOLDER NAME>  /<MOUNT POINT>  <NFS or CIFS>  <OPTIONS>  0 0

What goes in each field will depend on your NAS and it's settings. Post back here with more info and I'm sure several folks will offer assistance.

[ianp5a]

Thanks. I have an off the shelf WD Mycloud 4tb NAS.
I'm looking for an application that would make the correct entry in fstab for me without me having to spend ages researching both now and at any time in the future, if I change computers or distros. And also for other family members and anyone who just wants to do their backups easily.

If Smb4K can find the shares automatically, it should be possible to have an app discover the shares and save an entry in fstab correctly. And save the possibility of errors. Maybe something could be added to Kubuntu distro to help everybody?

We don't want to give people the excuse that Windows is far better. It seems crazy that every single user has to become proficient and spend time setting it up without any mistakes, when that is not necessary.

[ianp5a]

It looks like KNetworkmounter is the right solution.

KNetworkmounter
Mounting Samba,SFTP und NFS Networkdrives is easily possible with KNetworkmounter.
This application uses the normal mount command to access network shares which makes it possible for every application to use files from the share and not relying on KIO (KDE Input/Output) .

https://neptuneos.com/en/knetworkmounter.html

Has anyone got this to work on Kubuntu? or know how it can be installed? It's not in Discover.

[ianp5a]

I just found a deb here:
https://download.neptuneos.com/repos...etworkmounter/
knetworkmounter_0.5_amd64.deb
It runs, but I've not been able to connect to the NAS. It doesn't appear to find any NAS or shares using Samba or any of the other options.

The KDE Forum have been discussing this exact same problem of using network shares:
https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=83&t=141917

[vinnywright]

Dolphin already can do it that way (but it's better to do it the "fstab" way) you should not have installed a .deb from a different OS.

go to dolphin>network>attach network folder and you will find it ...

VINNY

[ianp5a]

Dolphin already can do it that way (but it's better to do it the "fstab" way) you should not have installed a .deb from a different OS.

That's because so far I haven't found an alternative. And editing fstab has poor usability for normal users (my request above) who can do this in a mouse click in other systems.

go to dolphin>network>attach network folder and you will find it ...
VINNY

Thanks. But this does not mount a share in a way it appears in file pickers in applications. (I'm on 17.10) I can see it added in Dolphin. But nowhere else. So if I want to open a file in, say Gimp, I cannot navigate to the mounted share as you would expect.