Secure your credentials for file share mounts on Ubuntu 17.04

I was in “Just make it work” mode and found I’d left my credentials out in plain text after setting up my Plex server to read off a remote fileshare.

Don’t do that, instead, do this:

1. Create a directory on your local linux machine where you’ll access the file share:

   sudo mkdir /media/PlexMedia
   

2. Modify /etc/fstab and add the following:

   //remoteservername/fileshare /media/PlexMedia cifs uid=1000,iocharset=utf8,credentials=/etc/cifs-creds 0 0
   

3. Now you need to create the credentials file:

   sudo touch cifs-creds && sudo chmod 600 cifs-creds
   

4. Use your favorite editor to modify the newly-created ‘cifs-creds’ file and add the following:

   user=YourUser 
   password=YourPassword
   

5. Reboot, and you’ll auto-mount the file share, securely :)