Automounting Samba shares using autofs

Instructions:

1. Install autofs

$ sudo apt-get install autofs

2. Create map file with one mountpoint per line

# echo "desiredmountpoint -fstype=cifs,rw,username=mysmbuser,password=mysmbpwd,uid=myuser,gid=mygroup ://hostname/directory" >> /etc/auto.somename

To force a specific CIFS/SMB version use the following syntax

# echo "desiredmountpoint -fstype=cifs,rw,username=mysmbuser,password=mysmbpwd,uid=myuser,gid=mygroup,vers=2.0 ://hostname/directory" >> /etc/auto.somename

3. Add mapp file to master map (default timeout is 15min/900sec)

# echo "/mnt/anyexistingdir    /etc/auto.somename    --timeout 3600" >> /etc/auto.master

4. Restart the autofs daemon and check if it is working

$ sudo /etc/init.d/autofs restart

Notes:

• There might be some troubles resolving the hostname of the Samba server. Using the IP address instead of the hostname helped in my case.
• For more details regarding autofs, see here.