Mounting a Synology DiskStation on Ubuntu 12.04
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:date: 2012-05-01 20:45
:tags: Linux, Ubuntu, Synology
:slug: mounting-a-synology-diskstation-on-ubuntu-12.04
:author: Brian Neal

I have a Synology DiskStation that I use for a home NAS. I didn't take good
notes when I got it to work with Ubuntu 10.04, so I had to fumble about when I
upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04 last weekend. So for next time, here is the recipe I
used.

First, you need to install the **cifs-utils** package::

   $ sudo apt-get install cifs-utils

Next, I added the following text to my ``/etc/fstab`` file::

   //192.168.1.2/shared /mnt/syn cifs noauto,iocharset=utf8,uid=1000,gid=1000,credentials=/home/brian/.cifspwd 0 0
   
Take note of the following:

* Replace ``//192.168.1.2/`` with the IP address or hostname of your
  DiskStation. Likewise, ``/shared`` is just the path on the DiskStation that I
  wanted to mount. 
* ``/mnt/syn`` is the mount point where the DiskStation will appear on our local
  filesystem.
* I didn't want my laptop to mount the DiskStation on bootup, so I used the
  ``noauto`` parameter.
* The ``uid`` and ``gid`` should match the user and group IDs of your Ubuntu
  user. You can find this by grepping your username in ``/etc/passwd``.
* The ``credentials`` parameter should point to a file you create that contains
  the username and password of the DiskStation user you want to impersonate (see
  below).

Your ``.cifspwd`` file should look like the following::

   username=username
   password=password

Obviously you'll want to use the real username / password pair of a user on your
DiskStation.

To be paranoid, you should make the file owned by root and readable only by
root. Do this after you get everything working::

   $ sudo chown root:root .cifspwd
   $ sudo chmod 0600 .cifspwd

I created the mount point for the DiskStation with::

   $ sudo mkdir -p /mnt/syn

Then, whenever I want to use the DiskStation I use::

   $ sudo mount /mnt/syn

And to unmount it::

   $ sudo umount /mnt/syn

You can avoid the ``mount`` and ``umount`` commands if you remove the
``noauto`` parameter from the ``/etc/fstab`` entry. In that case, Ubuntu will
automatically try to mount the DiskStation at startup.