DESPERATE for help using SMB shares in multiple CTs.

[michaeljkent090]

Alright long story short I have been in SMB H*ll on my homelab for the last 8 or nine months. I have exhausted youtube and google trying to find the correct way to use SMBS in proxmox.

Currently I have been creating a folder in /mnt and using a command to mount it in shell. This seems to work for a bit then it dosnt, or if the power goes out all the shares unmount.

I have posted here a couple times and no one has been willing to help me so far.

I would like someone to help me get my SMBS set up CORRECTLY and reboot / power loss proof. Last time I posted someone helped me add the SMB to the proxmox gui, but that was as far as i got.

My setup is currently a Open media vault VM hosting multiple SMBS as a centralized storage ---> to a bunch of privileged containers such as plex and my ARR stack.

Issue currently by editing fstab is it doesn't survive a reboot if the power goes out, some containers don't seem to want to write to the SMB'S, and sometimes the mount points seem messed up and the CT's don't seem to see the inner folders on the SMB.

I am desperate to get this fixed for once and for all, but all the tutorials i seem to find have varying ideas on how to do this in different levels of complexity. I need to be able to use the SMB's without having to rebuild the cts from scratch as family members are using some of them such as plex, and resetting all that up is not something they will do on the end user end.

Really hoping soemone is charitable enough to help a guy out here.

Thank you

 

[aj@root]

1. Pick an SMB Host

Edit: I may have misread. In the first section I thought you were saying you were running SMB from Proxmox and I didn't see the bit in the middle about using Open Media Vault. All the same, I'll leave this here.

As the SMB Host I'd recommend an SMB appliance.

- TrueNAS / FreeNAS (best with PCI passthrough to drives)
- https://www.truenas.com/blog/yes-you-can-virtualize-freenas/
- NextCloud / OwnCloud (VM or TurnKey Container)
- https://www.reddit.com/r/NextCloud/comments/156m5t8/comment/jtr6jxd/
- https://www.turnkeylinux.org/nextcloud
- https://www.turnkeylinux.org/owncloud
- TurnKey FileServer
- https://www.turnkeylinux.org/fileserver

Or, if you want something lighter weight, and full control, a Debian VM.

It might sound like running the storage from a VM or container is "overcomplicating it". HOWEVER, this is the way Proxmox is designed. Just like you wouldn't try to get a plugin for Docker or VirtualBox to host SMB to its guests, although Proxmox gives you a lot of flexibility, and you can modify the base system, you probably shouldn't.

"Shouldn't" is a strongly subjective word, but let's put it in a more objective context:
- the Proxmox Backup Server can backup and restore Proxmox Guests, but there is no officially supported way to backup or restore a Proxmox Host.
- Proxmox specifically offers SMB hosts in its own template library (including some of those mentioned above)

I highly recommend choosing from one of the supported routes, unless you have a very strong and specific reason not to.
(plus you get all the benefits of automatic failover and such)


2. Mount via Systemd or Cron Job, not fstab

You'll need to set this up for each SMB client (including the Proxmox Host, if for some reason you happen to want to).

You can use a systemd automount (on Debian and Red Hat systems), or a cron job (on Alpine / OpenRC systems) - or both to make sure that client connections are restored when the host connection is interrupted.

Here's what I use on my Plex VM at home:

/etc/systemd/system/
   mnt-SMB-TV\x20Shows.automount
   mnt-SMB-TV\x20Shows.mount

mnt-SMB-TV\x20Shows.mount:

[Unit]
  Description=My CIFs Media Mounter
  Requires=network-online.target
  After=network-online.service

[Mount]
  What=//192.168.1.42/TV Shows
  Where=/mnt/SMB/TV Shows
  Options=username=bobby,password=droptables
  Type=cifs

[Install]
  WantedBy=multi-user.target

mnt-SMB-TV\x20Shows.automount:

[Unit]
  Description=My CIFs Media Automount

[Automount]
  Where=/mnt/SMB/TV Shows

[Install]
  WantedBy=multi-user.target

You could also drop a script in /etc/cron.daily/ or /etc/periodic/daily/, or use a Systemd Timer (see https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd/Timers or https://opensource.com/article/20/7/systemd-timers) to periodically force a remount.

See also: https://superuser.com/questions/606587/automatic-remount-cifs-smb-after-short-network-interruption

3. Configuring Permissions

TLDR: If you want to keep it simple, use a single user and a single group on all shared files. Managing ACLs is a PITA, and they're hit or miss.

How you setup permissions is different depending on the appliance.

In a VM you can mount as the user who owns the storage.

In a container you have to lower the security in order to mount, so if you need a kernel mount (as opposed to a pure API / software mount), it's probably better to use a VM.

Sadly, you're probably just not going to have a good experience with permissions. Every time you add a file on the source as one user, even if you have the correct ACLs in place, it'll be hit or miss as to whether or not another user will be able to access the file. At least that's been my experience.

This is another area where you might just want to drop in a daily script that adds read permission to all users and write permission to the owner for any files you're sharing, or stick to a single user for read/write and a single group for read that both the own and the guest belong to as their primary group.

One ProTip™ though: use one kernel mount (e.g. ZFS dataset or other volume type) per SMB mount, if you can. At least in TrueNAS that makes the permissions work a bit better. If you add SMB mounts to subfolders, it seems that it won't track quotas correctly, among other things. I wish I had the source for this on hand, but it is something I've had to do to solve some permission issues.

 

[michaeljkent090]

Thank you for the reply. I do appreciate it.

Yes i already have the SMBS set up.

Unfortunately systemd and cron jobs are something I have no idea how to use or navigate its completely over my head.

 

[aj@root]

I'd recommend feeding our convo here into an LLM as context and asking it some questions to help navigate you through the process.

I've been using Grok (https://x.com/grok) of late and have been very pleased with it, but ChatGPT (https://chatgpt.com/) and DeepSeek, Qwen, etc are probably on par in their latest release.

While I don't recommend LLMs as a general solution for every problem, in this case I believe it will function as a really good search alternative to piece together context from various forum posts and adjust it to the level of detail you're looking for.

Try something like that and see how it turns out, and come back with any specific questions you have.