Synology NAS: Mapping the Network Drive

I had newly installed Ubuntu 10.10 and was trying to communicate with my Synology DS109 network-attached storage (NAS) unit.  I had previously resolved some problems with this unit, but some had remained unresolved; and now, in any case, I was starting over.

I had downloaded and installed DiskStation Manager (DSM) 3.0, the Synology Assistant, and the User's Guide.  DSM was a web-based program, apparently running on the DS109, that I accessed by simply typing the DS109's address (e.g., 192.168.2.1) into the Firefox address bar.  I was able to connect to the DS109 by typing the username and password that it needed (i.e., not my Ubuntu username and password).

As outlined in a previous post, I had also created a mount point ("sudo mkdir /media/SYNDATA") for the DS109's SYNDATA partition.  The fstab (i.e., "sudo gedit /etc/fstab") contained a line that had worked previously to let me contact that partition.  The line I was using was this:

//192.168.2.1/SYNDATA  /media/SYNDATA  cifs  user,uid=ray,gid=users,rw,suid,credentials=/etc/cifspwd,iocharset=utf8  0  0

where "ray" was my Ubuntu user ID, not my DS109 user ID.  The DS109 user ID was contained in the /etc/cifspwd file; and now, as I looked at this, I realized that reinstalling Ubuntu from scratch had surely wiped out that file.  So I recreated it ("sudo gedit /etc/cifspwd"), using my DS109 user ID and password, in this form:

username=[DS109 username]
password=[DS109 password]

and that's all that file contained.  Example:  if my DS109 username had been Joe, the first line in this two-line file would have been "username=Joe," and the second line would have been "password=JoesPassword" (wahtever that user's actual password was).  Then I typed these commands

sudo chmod 0600 /etc/cifspwd
sudo mount -a

These were the basic steps recommended in a relevant page in Synology's wiki.  The problem -- or at least *a* problem -- as I eventually figured out (or re-figured; Synology's tech support may have originally suggested it), was that the "credentials" part of the fstab line was not working.  If I replaced "credentials=/etc/cifspwd" with "username=Joe,password=JoesPassword" (and then saved fstab), then the "sudo mount -a" command worked:  SYNDATA appeared in Nautilus like any other partition.  So what would happen if I put exactly that -- username=Joe,password=JoesPassword -- on the same line in /etc/cifspwd, instead of putting them on two separate lines?  No dice.  The cifspwd file was a dud.  I left the username and password information in the fstab, and deleted the cifspwd file ("sudo rm cifspwd").

So the short answer I arrived at, here, was that the Synology wiki was wrong, at least for my purposes.  I needed to take all the other steps -- creating a mount point, etc. -- but instead of creating the cifspwd file, I just needed to enter a line in /etc/fstab of this form:

//192.168.2.1/SYNDATA  /media/SYNDATA  cifs  user,uid=[Ubuntu username],gid=users,rw,suid,username=[Synology username],password=[Synology password],iocharset=utf8  0  0

and possibly the "iocharset" part was optional.

VMware Workstation, Ubuntu Host, Windows XP Guest: Automated Way to Map Network Drives

I was using Windows XP virtual machines (VMs) in VMware Workstation 7 on Ubuntu Linux.  I wanted to automate the process of mapping network drives.  I typically used the Map Network Drive technique in Windows Explorer for this purpose.  It appeared possible to automate this with a registry edit, but apparently a  more typical and robust approach was to use the "net use" command.

The net use command could be entered from the command line.  I was more interested in saving it in a batch file that I could apply to multiple network drives and could re-run anytime without having to remember or research the proper syntax.  Microsoft seemed to say that, for my purposes, the command to map a network drive would look something like this:

net use d: "\\vmware-host\Shared Folders\DATA" /persistent:yes

where DATA was the name that I had given to the drive in Ubuntu.  This resulted in an entry in Windows Explorer that read, "Data on 'vmware-host\Shared Folders' (D:)."  I was not able, at this point, to automate the process of right-clicking and renaming that to be simply "DATA."

I combined several of those commands in a batch file.  A batch file was just a file created in Notepad, with one command on each line.  I also included a comment, in case I wanted to write an "undo" batch file.  The line just shown, made permanent and accompanied by that comment, looked like this:

net use d: "\\vmware-host\Shared Folders\DATA" /persistent:yes

; to disconnect, use this (I think):  net use d: "\\vmware-host\Shared Folders\DATA" /delete

I saved that batch file in the folder containing my various WinXP installation materials.  So then, for future installations, all I had to do was to double-click on that batch file in Windows Explorer, or start it from the command line or from another batch file, and my drive mapping would proceed automatically.