samba mount failed with "CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -6" and "is not a valid block device"

Environment:

• server: Windows
• client: RHEL 6.7 (samba-common-3.6.23-20.el6.x86_64) or Debian Wheezy (samba-common-bin 2:3.6.6-6+deb7u7)

Client's /etc/fstab:

//10.0.0.10/share/ /media/smb cifs _netdev,user,uid=1000,forceuid,gid=1000,forcegid,noperm,username=XXXX,password=XXXX,domain=aa.bb.cc

Mounting:

$ sudo mount /media/smb/
mount: //10.0.0.10/share/ is not a valid block device
$ dmesg | tail
CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -6

3 Answers

Possible issue is CIFS/SMB version

//192.168.1.1/MyShare/ /mnt/cifs cifs vers=2.1,username=user1,password=passwd1 0 0

Might be related to SMBv1/CIFS removal in Windows 10 / Windows Server v1709 (RS3):

You have to add cifs-utils to be able to mount CIFS shares:

Red Hat/CentOS related:

$ sudo yum install cifs-utils

Debian/Ubuntu related:

$ sudo apt install cifs-utils

Solution found here: