mount.cifs issues with low quality network connections

English Network/Internet
1

I have an Opensuse Leap 42.1 server connected to a small network (let’s call it machine network) of Windows machines. The server is regularly copying the files from shared folders on these machines and is sharing them via samba in the intranet of our institution.
Since these Windows machines are located in different rooms and ethernet connection to the machine network is not always possible, few of them are connected to the network via WiFi. For all PCs but one, the WiFi connection is good enough to mount shared folders to the FS of the server on boot using something like:

//169.254.10.1/data /folder_on_server cifs _netdev,rw,user=User,password=password,uid=1000 0 0

in fstab.
But the connection for one of these Windows machines is relatively poor and mount on boot using fstab frequently fails. Also, attempts to mount the folder from this machine manually using mount -t cifs is frequently unsuccesful (the terminal just hangs and can be unblocked by canceling the mount command with ctrl+C). On the other hand, if I try to access the shared folder from other Windows machines (just type \169.254.10.1 - the IP address of the poorly connected machine in File Explorer), it always works albeit being sometimes slow and I can view or modify the data on the shared folder. Using Dolphin to mount the share if it is not mounted yet also works without issues as opposed to mount.cifs.
So, now my question: is it possible to adapt mount.cifs to a poor network connection (tell it to ignore connection errors etc) and make it to act more like Windows does - slower but reliable and stable access to the files?

Konstl

2

You could use the ‘noauto’ option so that the boot process is not compromised by the unreliable network.

3

The boot is not a big issue, I am not restarting the thing that often, it is more the fact that mounting frequently fails and the data are not accessible or browseable anymore. Windows machines or mount in dolphin work still fine even in this case.
But thanks for the suggestion, I will add it to fstab as well.

4

I also have realized that this thread should be probably rather in the Network section than here but can’t move it there anymore. Deano, would you like to move it there (If my assumption that moderators can do that is correct, of course)?

5

Yes, I can do that for you. Stand by…

6

Thank you, Deano!