Difference between revisions of "How to mount a Network Share in a Linux Container under Proxmox"

Latest revision as of 10:35, 22 July 2022

This article describes how to mount a Network Share inside an Unprivileged (or Privileged) Linux Container (LXC) in Proxmox. This is non-trivial because Unprivileged LXC Containers do not have the privileges available to directly mount network locations. The work around involves mounting the network share on the Container Host and then binding the mount folder on the host to a folder in the Container.

Note that Unprivileged containers will only be able to read from Network Shares. Privileged containers will be able to read from and write to Network Shares. You cannot modify the Privilege of a container once it is made. You can restore a container in either Privileged or Unprivileged mode. Converting a container from Unprivileged to Privileged should be fairly straight forward. The reverse isn't always true because there are files on a Privileged container that cannot exist on an Unprivileged container. This thread describes some of these issues.

1. Log into your Container as root
   1. Create the mount point directory with

      mkdir /mnt/extfolder

   2. Log out of the container and stop the container
2. Log into your Host Machine as root
   1. if necessary, create a credentials file with the username and password for your network share. Then secure the file

      nano /root/.credentials/my-credentials

      1. add the following lines

         username=theusername
         password=thepassword
         workgroup=theworkgroup

      2. Exit nano and save your changes by hitting Ctrl-X and then Y
      3. run

         chmod 600 /root/.credentials/my-credentials

   2. create the target mount folder by running

      mkdir /mnt/netfolder

   3. Add a line to your fstab file to mount the network share by running

      nano /etc/fstab

      and adding the following line to the bottom

      //net/path/to/netfolder /mnt/netfolder cifs user,credentials=/root/.credentials/my-credentials,iocharset=utf8,noperm 0 0

   4. Reload the fstab file by running

      mount -a

      Now you should be able to see your network share's content on the Host Machine at /mnt/netfolder
   5. Bind the host directory to the container directory in the container config by running

      nano /etc/pve/nodes/hostname/lxc/mycontainer.conf

      and adding the following line after memory and before net0

      mp0: /mnt/netfolder,mp=/mnt/extfolder

3. Restart the Container and the network share should be accessible, on the Container, at /mnt/extfolder