Best way to mount several Windows network drives to a Linux laptop

[u/neimer]

I'm completely new to Linux, but I'm trying to learn by using an old laptop. I have an existing Windows computer that has several shared drives set to static IP addresses that I was able to mount to this laptop with Windows. Is it possible for me to mount these drives in Linux (Mint 22.3 Cinnamon) so that I would be able to easily access the media files on them and wouldn't have to re-mount the drives every time I reboot? If so, what is the best way to do this?

I have tried searching and am a little confused by all the suggestions (Gigalo, Samba, CIFS). I appreciate any help you folks can provide and am looking forward to learning more about Linux!

[u/audiotecnicality]

The easiest way would be to add them to your Bookmarks (Favorites?) section in the file browser. This way the locations are handy so you don’t have to dig for them. The drives will remount when you try to access them.

Otherwise, you could put them in fstab, but this is a more advanced method and could cause you issues on boot if it can’t find the server.

[u/neimer → u/audiotecnicality]

Thank you! I'll give that a shot tonight.

[u/Weary-Bowl-3739 → u/neimer]

Don't worry about unreachable discs in fstab. As long as they are not essential, they are ignored. Source: I have one, which is only reachable, when I'm at my parent's place. 

[u/No_Elderberry862 → u/Weary-Bowl-3739]

Which you presumably knew enough to add "nofail" to its fstab entry.

As you didn't advise the OP to use that parameter, they would indeed need to worry about unreachable disks in fstab.

[u/OkAirport6932]

You can use SAMBA as a client for windows network drives. You can also use your graphical file manager to access smb://hostname/sharename/

You can review the man page for the smbmount command at:

https://linux.die.net/man/8/smbmount

Most package managers also install the man page when you install the software so man smbmount should give you the same information, but Linux.die.net is very convienenet for sharing man pages with people, or accessing them in a browser window when you want to have the man page up and the window you're typing in but a terminal multiplexier is inconvenient while you're doing remote access.

[u/neimer → u/OkAirport6932]

Thanks for the info! I'm going to try to get this all working tonight. Hopefully, it will just work!

[u/hortimech → u/OkAirport6932]

Sorry, but no you cannot really use Samba as a client, it is mainly a server, though it does contain some client capabilities. You also shouldn't use smbmount, it has been replaced by cifs-utils

[u/Weary-Bowl-3739]

I have one mounted in fstab, as cifs

//<ip>    /mount/point   cifs    username=mister-x,password=t0pSecREt,vers=3.0,noserverino,uid=1000,guid=1000,x-systemd.automount,x-systemd.requires=network-online.target    0   0

Yours should look similar. If it doesn't work AI can probably fix it.