Mounting SU network drives¶

SU staff and students have access to a number of network drives. The H:\ drive on Windows represents a user's personal storage, and the G:\ drive provides shared, departmental storage. The P:\ drive contains software installation files (access to this drive may be limited). These drives can be mounted on Linux.

The contents of the network drives you have access to can also be viewed and modified online at storage.sun.ac.za.

A set of packages is required to mount these drives on Linux. To install them, run the following:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install ldap-utils cifs-utils

Create a directory for the mount points inside your home directory:

cd
mkdir mnt

And create the corresponding directories for each mount point, e.g. in the case of your home directory:

mkdir mnt/$USER

Once this is done, you can use a script to mount each drive. The following example applies to the personal H:\ drive:

Note that the $USER and $PASS variables need to be set either in the script or exported in the shell prior to running the script. If your local username is the same as your network username you can set this automatically by adding USER=$(whoami) to the start of the script. To prompt for a password without displaying it in the shell, you can use read -s -p "[LDAP] password for $USER: " PASS after $USER has been set.

#!/bin/bash

while getopts ":u:m:h?" opt; do
    case "$opt" in
        u)
            USER=$OPTARG
            ;;
        m)
            MOUNT=$OPTARG
            ;;
        h|\?)
            echo "`basename `: mount home directory on NetApp"
            echo " Options:"
            echo "   -h         this help message"
            echo "   -u <USER>  username to use, defaults to $USER"
            echo "   -m <MOUNT> directory where to mount, defaults to $HOME/mnt/$USER"
            echo
            echo " Requires sudo access to use mount command"
            echo
            exit 0
    esac
done

MOUNT=${MOUNT:-$HOME/mnt/$USER}

if [ "/" != "${MOUNT::1}" ]; then
    MOUNT="`pwd`/$MOUNT"
fi

LDAP=`which ldapsearch`
CIFS=`which mount.cifs`

if [ -z "$LDAP" ]; then
    echo "ldapsearch not found, please install with one of the following commands"
    echo "Ubuntu (or Debian/Mint): aptitude install ldap-utils"
    echo "RedHat (or Fedora/Scientific): yum install openldap-clients"
    exit 1
fi

if [ -z "$CIFS" ]; then
    echo "mount.cifs not found, please install with one of the following commands"
    echo "Ubuntu (or Debian/Mint): aptitude install cifs-utils"
    echo "RedHat (or Fedora/Scientific): yum install cifs-utils"
    exit 1
fi

if [ ! -d $MOUNT ]; then
    mkdir -p $MOUNT
    if [ $? -eq 1 ]; then
        echo "error creating mountpoint $MOUNT"
        exit 1
    fi
elif [ -n "`mount | grep $MOUNT`" ]; then
    echo "already mounted"
    exit 1
fi

USER=ivdl
#read -s -p "[LDAP] password for $USER: " PASS
echo

OPTS="-x -H ldaps://stbad01.stb.sun.ac.za -b dc=stb,dc=sun,dc=ac,dc=za -D $USER@stb.sun.ac.za -w $PASS (sAMAccountName=$USER) homeDirectory"

OUTPUT=`LDAPTLS_REQCERT=allow $LDAP $OPTS`

if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
    HOME=`echo "$OUTPUT" | grep ^homeDirectory | awk '{print $2}' | tr '\' '/' 2>/dev/null`

    if [ -z "$HOME" ]; then
        echo "unable to find home directory"
        exit 1
    fi

    echo "mounting $HOME on $MOUNT"

    OPTS="-t cifs -o sec=ntlm,username=$USER,password=$PASS,uid=$UID,vers=1.0"
    sudo mount $OPTS $HOME $MOUNT
else
    echo "incorrect password, unable to authenticate"
    exit 1
fi

Note that the vers=1.0 argument in the mount options is required, omitting it will result in an error.

To find the correct path to mount the shared G:\ drive you can log on to Windows and view the details of the mounted drives. In general, the format of the path for the G:\ drive is as follows:

//sunstaff.stb.sun.ac.za/dept/<faculty>/<department>

And the path for the P:\ drive is as follows:

//146.232.77.125/pool