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Mount a samba share on the fly without having it mounted statically at boot via the /etc/fstab file can bring you the advantage of an unpainful boot in case of unavailability of the samba server like in the following common scenarios:

• laptop: you mount your pc share at home, but when you move it becomes unavailable
• workstation: you mount the share of your workmate – but when he/she goes on holiday his/her workstation stays off

Using autofs this can be accomplished easily following these steps:

1. Set /auto under the control of autofs adding this line to /etc/auto.master:
   
   /auto            /etc/auto.auto    --timeout=5 --ghost
   
   
2. Point directory to a samba share //server/share in /etc/auto.auto:
   
   directory -fstype=cifs,credentials=/etc/smb.auth ://server/share (directory is a child directory of /auto)
   
   
3. Store access credentials to the samba share in /etc/smb.auth:
   
   username=yourusername
password=youpassword
   
   
4. Secure the password file:
   
   # chmod 600 /etc/smb.auth
   
   
5. Start autofs:
   
   # /etc/init.d/autofs start
Starting automount: [ OK ]