If you recently updated your RedHat or CentOS 7.6 system, you may suddenly start getting “Permission Denied” errors when attempting to mount SMB shares via CIFS. Typical error messages in syslog look like this:
kernel: Status code returned 0xc000006d STATUS_LOGON_FAILURE
kernel: CIFS VFS: Send error in SessSetup = -13
kernel: CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -13
Configuration that triggered the problem
- Synology NAS with latest operating system shares a volume via SMB
- CentOS 7 Linux server mounts SMB share using a local username and password (NOT domain credentials)
- cifs-utils version 6.2 installed in May of 2019 (this by itself worked fine)
- libsmbclient just updated to 4.9.1-6
- libmount just updated to 2.23.2-61
- CIFS mount options: vers=3.0,credentials=/root/credentials.txt,sec=ntlmsspi
- File /root/credentials.txt contained a username and password that are LOCAL to the SMB server
Troubleshooting & solution
I was able to isolate the problem to mount.cifs with the following procedure:
- Mount the SMB share from a Windows host, using the same credentials as the Linux host. This proved that the credentials were valid and there were no problems on the SMB server side.
- Access the SMB share from the Linux host using smbclient. This step ruled out any network issues between the Linux and SMB server, and verified that the version of Samba installed on the Linux host was compatible with the SMB server.
I found the solution in a post from a couple of years ago in the askubuntu forum on StackExchange. It seems that one of the recent CentOS/RedHat updates changed some default behavior in the way that mount.cifs authenticates to SMB shares. When authenticating as a local user, you now have to specify the host as the domain. I did this by adding one line to the credentials file that is referenced from /etc/fstab as shown below:
//172.1.1.1/share_name /mnt/mountpoint cifs vers=3.0,credentials=/root/credentials.txt,sec=ntlmsspi
Here are the contents of file /root/credentials.txt:
username=my_username
password=my_password
domain=172.1.1.1I am not sure why this problem showed up now; it seems like it should have occurred months ago when we updated to latest version of cifs-utils. I’m also unsure if this problem will occur if you’re attempting to authenticate as a domain user. Let me know in the comments!
This saved my life! Thank you very much for posting this!
I’ll chime in as well. You rock for posting this. Problem showed up randomly after an update.
THANK you!!…. I haven’t found solution for this problem even on the red-hat forums….
Make sure you use smbpasswd -a username to set the password for accessing samba shares if you’re getting error code -13
How about error code – 2
Thank you very much for the solution about the credential file. Would be nice if the error from dmesg actually gives more info.
I love you
Thank you! That’s what I missing.
Does anyone have issues overwriting a file from on a linux mount ? After my upgrade from CentOs 7.4 to 7.6 file can be written but not overwritten. The smb server is from a Synology nas if that makes a difference.
i had the same issue when i try to authenticate with cifs server located on vnx7600 storage array which is associated with the AD authentication ?
cifs vfs: cifs_mount failed w/return code = 2 cifs vfs: error connecting to socket. aborting operation
am getting this error.
Please advise.
OMG. smbclient was working. Ubuntu was mounting perfectly, but Centos would NOT mount. Added the domain to the creds file and MOUNT.
THANK GOD found this article, you saved me lots of hours figuring out what was the error. I’ve not seen any official documentation referring to this change…