Mounting external Windows (SMB) drives in Mga5

[rodgoslin]

I have a drobo-fs disk unit, which, commonly is mounted on all my machines. However on coming to configure a new build of Mga on an ASUS netbook, there are problems mounting this device, and probably any other device. Going to Mageia Control Center and on to "Access Windows (SMBshared drives and directories". the drobo-fs is visible, as is a Transporter which also requires mounting. On selecting the appropriate part ot mount (Public), there are the usual selections as to Mount, Mount Point and Options. The Mount point is determined without problem, but on opening Options, there is only a box, for the user name, where I would expect two boxes, for user name and password. Without the option for entering a password, it is not possible to mount the drive and to modify /etc/fstab. This is the second machine that I have installed Mga5 RC, on. There was no problem with the other machine, which was an update from Mga4. Examining this machine, the password option is there, the mount was successful, on boot-up, as it had been in Mga4. I would stress that this is a clean install, from scratch in both / and /home, so nothing remains of the earlier Mageia install. Although in order to avoid a new version of KDE, which I could not understand, use or change, I rebuilt the machine as Mga4, then did a clean install o Mga5, without formatting /home. So I have a clean machine but with an invocation of KDE that I can use, and at least, hopefully put back the way I was using it before..

[rodgoslin]

As a follow up to my previous post, I've re-built the machine as a 32 bit setup, to check whehter this problem was 64 bit only, but the same problem persists. So,, unless things change with the final release, I have no contact with my bulk storage facility.
However, taking another tack, I tried invoking the Control Centre from the command line. Nothing changed, but I had the opportunity to add the password, in the command line, so I at least had an entry in /etc/fstab. But without the password entry. Adding the password to that entry, gave me a viable mount on boot. Doing the same with a Trasporter unit that I have proved a little more difficult, since the "Access Windows (SMB) Shared Drives" could not 'see' the Transporter unit. However, by copying the entry for the Drobo, with the required changes, gave me access to the Transporter, too. A word of advice for anyone trying this. The search for servers oin the "Access Windows (SMB) Drives, etc" finds only the server name, unless I'm missing something.. The mount will always fail, since the mount operation requires the IP address. So before you try it, you have to edit the /etc/hosts file to relate server name to IP address. Then it works. It's not the most elegant of work arounds, and hopefully will be sorted in the final release. But this situation is not something I would have expected in the release candidate. And before someone flames me for these comments. I'm a Production Engineering Desighner, by profession, and despite a number of years as the System Administrator, on a Solaris setup, after the UK decided it no longer wanted to make anything, I have little ability, or interest in writing software.To me the computer is simply a tool, and I expect it to work as well as the tolls that I used to design.

[jimtheplanner]

Hi Folks,

I also have problems with my external USB Segate hard drive. It worked fine with Mageia 4 where I use luckybackup for incremental backups. However; it will not auto mount in Mageia 5 rc. As with rodgoslin - hoping all will work well for the final release...

[doktor5000]

How does an external usb drive relate to a SMB/CIFS share?
As a general hint and golden rule: Please only one problem per thread, for your issue please create a new one.

[Joste]

I also have the missing password box in the options dialogue on two machines both upgrades from 4.

Though obviously it is now release and not cauldron and I had forgotten that the OP had been about th RC.

[doktor5000]

I remember there was a bugreport for this exact issue, but I don't remember which it was :/
Here's a loosely related one that was fixes already: https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12530