Mounting at Boot Network Shares

Many ways to mount - fstab, autofs, systemd, fuse, gvfs,...
but the current go-to is systemd mount.

There are two distinct ways to mount with systemd

mount service is enabled
straight up simple mounting at boot, high expectation that the network share is always available during the boot, it's simple and easy to control order of execution, retries, time outs, easy to debug, best for servers, docker hosts,...
automount service is enabled
the mounting happens at the first demand to access the path, does not wait during boot for the mount to really happen, less predictable, can auto-umount on idle, good for users machines

Samba / SMB / CIFS

Arch wiki on samba systemd mount

Have /mnt/pool directory ready on the client - sudo mkdir /mnt/pool

will be creating a mount file in /etc/systemd/system/
the name MUST correspond with the planned mount location, just slashes / are replaced with dashes -
So if the share should be mounted at /mnt/pool the file is:
/etc/systemd/system/mnt-pool.mount

[Unit]
Description=Mount MergerFS Pool or Whatever
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target
# Before=docker.service

[Mount]
What=//10.0.19.80/pool
Where=/mnt/pool
Type=cifs
Options=rw,username=bastard,password=aaa,uid=1000,gid=1000,file_mode=0664,dir_mode=0775,vers=3,_netdev

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

enable the mount service sudo systemctl enable mnt-pool.mount
done

Automount version

If the machine is just an end user PC or a notebook, or no service really depends on that share being present straight from boot, or a notebook moves between networks and share is not always there... we can use automount that mounts the share only when something tries to access the path.

disable mount service if already enabled: sudo systemctl disable mnt-pool.mount

we add another file next to the mount file, named exactly the same, except the extension is automount, so here it would be:
/etc/systemd/system/mnt-pool.automount

[Unit]
Description=Mount MergerFS Pool or Whatever

[Automount]
Where=/mnt/pool
# TimeoutIdleSec=3600  # Unmount after 1 hour idle

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

we enable this automount service: sudo systemctl enable --now mnt-pool.automount
done

Useful commands

smbclient -L 10.0.19.11 - list shares mounted from the ip
systemctl list-units -t mount --all

NFS

Arch wiki on NFS systemd mount

All the stuff regarding mount vs automount from Samba section above applies, only the content of the systemd unit files changes.

/etc/systemd/system/mnt-pool.mount

[Unit]
Description=Mount MergerFS Pool or Whatever
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Mount]
What=10.0.19.80:/mnt/pool
Where=/mnt/pool
Type=nfs
Options=vers=3

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

/etc/systemd/system/mnt-pool.automount

[Unit]
Description=AutoMount MergerFS Pool or Whatever
Requires=network-online.target
After=network-online.target

[Automount]
Where=/mnt/pool
TimeoutIdleSec=0

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Enable the mount service: sudo systemctl enable --now mnt-pool.mount
Or for automount sudo systemctl enable --now mnt-pool.automount

Windows Client

Samba - windows

just mount it or map it as a letter

NFS - windows

For Windows NFS clients, write access often requires all_squash with a defined anonuid/anongid, because Windows does not send linux uid/gid information. Something like this:
/mnt/pool 10.0.19.0/24(rw,async,no_subtree_check,all_squash,anonuid=1000,anongid=1000,fsid=1)

Windows Client

must be windows pro, not windows home
add windows component in the control panel - Services for NFS - Client for NFS
cmd, not powershell - mount \\10.0.19.80\mnt\pool N:

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