<![CDATA[Cannot mount network share to save my life]]>Hello Linux gang! Hopefully this is a quick one and I'll feel like a goober after. I am trying to mount a network share on a new VM. On my first VM, this seemed to work flawlessly. Here is the fstab entry for the working VM:
//192.168.1.186/gilashare /home/marighost/gilashare cifs uid=1000,gid=1000,credentials=/home/marighost/.sharelogin,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777,x-systemd.automount,_netdev 0 0

The permissions for the .sharelogin are chmod'd to be 600.

In the .sharelogin itself, I can assure you that my username and password are correct, however, my password does contain a semicolon, if that matters at all (it doesn't seem to for VM 1).

I copied these over 1:1 into my new VM, and get the following error:

mount: /home/marighost/gilashare: cannot mount //192.168.1.186/gilashare read-only. dmesg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.

So I check dmesg | less and see:

[565649.948730] CIFS: enabling forcegid mount option implicitly because gid= option is specified  
[565649.948731] CIFS: Attempting to mount //192.168.1.186/gilashare  
[565649.950091] CIFS: VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -13```  

In searching for the solution for that return code (which doesn't really seem to map to a specific error), it seems like it's just "your password's wrong." But I can assure you that it isn't. `.sharelogin` on VM 2 has the same text and permissions as the file in VM 1. The fstab entries are identical. The mount points exist, each VM can see the share server and ping the IP.  

I even tried mounting the share via the standard `mount` command with the following:  
`sudo mount -t cifs //192.168.1.186/gilashare /home/marighost/gilashare -o username=marighost,password=[REDACTED]`  

I mentioned earlier that my password contains a semicolon (;), which seems to effect Bash in ways I don't fully understand. I wrapped my password in the CLI with apostrophes (''), and the command takes, but nothing happens. Checking `dmesg` just shows `[565649.948731] CIFS: Attempting to mount //192.168.1.186/gilashare` with no errors, and the drive still does not mount.  

I thank you for reading and taking the time to respond.
]]>https://forum.ieu.app/topic/1071b01a-eb99-41f0-b22d-f94727a8d1bc/cannot-mount-network-share-to-save-my-lifeRSS for NodeSat, 05 Sep 2026 19:44:43 GMTTue, 18 Aug 2026 12:31:50 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to Cannot mount network share to save my life on Tue, 18 Aug 2026 13:22:41 GMT]]>Some quick googling points to the possibility of the VM possibility defaulting to the wrong security type. You may need to add a "sec=_____" option to match whatever security type your share is using.

]]>https://forum.ieu.app/post/https://sh.itjust.works/comment/26959475https://forum.ieu.app/post/https://sh.itjust.works/comment/26959475Tue, 18 Aug 2026 13:22:41 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Cannot mount network share to save my life on Tue, 18 Aug 2026 13:02:37 GMT]]>Changed the password on the share server to remove the semicolon. Rebooted the share server (which is also a VM), and updated the .sharelogin with the updated password. Saved, and just-in-case ran sudo systemctl daemon-reload (despite fstab not changing) and finally sudo mount -a. Same errors as mentioned in the OP, unfortunately.

]]>https://forum.ieu.app/post/https://piefed.social/comment/12553330https://forum.ieu.app/post/https://piefed.social/comment/12553330Tue, 18 Aug 2026 13:02:37 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Cannot mount network share to save my life on Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:47:48 GMT]]>The easy first step is to just remove the semicolon from your password to see if that's actually the problem.

]]>https://forum.ieu.app/post/https://sh.itjust.works/comment/26959023https://forum.ieu.app/post/https://sh.itjust.works/comment/26959023Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:47:48 GMT