enterprise-ubuntu team mailing list archive

[David Burke <dmbst32@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello everyone,

I was wondering how you all mount network drives in Ubuntu. Let me start by
defining what I mean.

   1. Mount on (ldap, AD, etc) user login automatically
   2. No password re-entry
   3. Reconnect if network drops or not available on boot
   4. Must have a real mount point that isn't only ~/.gvfs/foo as some
   applications won't let the user browse here without actually going to the
   hidden folder

I also happen to use smb, but I don't think that matters.

I currently use pam_mount but it has a few issues with number 3. Under
normal circumstances it will reconnect. However if the network is not
available on boot pam_mount fails and gives up. This can happen on a fast
solid state hard drive computer where lightdm starts before networking is
up. It can also happen if networking in just unavailable for whatever
reason on boot (laptop turned on out of office, etc).

Is there anything better out there? Autofs? Custom scripts?

Lastly is anyone doing similar things to Windows Offline Files? That is a
mount point that syncs locally to the computer when offline or not on the
LAN. I've done this using a custom
unison<http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/>
script<http://davidmburke.com/2011/08/26/fully-automatic-backupsync-script-with-unison/>to
sync a hidden mount point every minute. This method works but is a bit
clunky and doesn't have the features Offline Files or say Dropbox has to
deal with conflicts. Solutions like Dropbox or Owncloud don't seem to me
acceptable because they are not automatic for the end user and thus less
acceptable in a corporate environment IMO. They are also
not necessarily something you can use with an existing network drive
infrastructure. Owncloud's samba connectivity features do not deal with
samba level permissions for example.

Best,

David Burke
davidmburke.com