Volume Mounts

To system administrators, a "volume" is an accessible storage area within a file system. These are typically locations on a hard disk or other storage that are assigned drive letters. In order to use these volumes they need to be "mounted". For example, if you plug a USB drive into a Windows laptop that USB drive is automatically assigned a letter, allowing it to be used immediately. This is "mounting" that new "volume" on that laptop. This can also be done on a server directly via command line. With SmarterMail, system administrators can also mount Windows or Linux volumes directly from the web interface.

Adding New Volume Mounts

To add a new Volume Mount, click the New button. When adding a Volume Mount, the following settings will be available:

• Volume Mount Path - REQUIRED. This is the location on the volume that will eventually hold the data. For example, "/var/local/folder1" in Linux, or "z:\" in Windows.
• Volume Mount Command - REQUIRED. Here, you essentially put all of the commands you'd need to mount the drive in your particular operating system. In Linux, that could be multiple commands strung together with "&&" between them. In Windows, this is simplified.
• Volume Unmount Command - This is the command necessary to unmount the volume. In Linux, that is generally "umount [Volume Mount Path]" and in Windows it is generally "net use [Volume Mount Path] /delete".

Simple Examples

Below are a couple of examples of using Volume Mounts. In both examples we'll mount volumes as simple guest shares, without the need for any credentials. However, this page is extremely flexible and can accommodate virtually any type of mount.

Linux

• Volume Mount Path:
  /mnt/everyone
• Volume Mount Command:
  mkdir -p /mnt/everyone && echo -e "//it-drive/everyone /mnt/everyone cifs guest,iocharset=utf8,uid=$(id -u),gid=$(id -g),file_mode=0775,dir_mode=0775,nofail 0 0" | tee -a /etc/fstab && mount -a
• Volume Unmount Command:
  umount /mnt/everyone

Windows

• Volume Mount Path:
  T:\
• Volume Mount Command:
  net use T:\\it-drive\shared
• Volume Unmount Command:
  net use T: /delete

Notes

• Only Volume Mounts added within SmarterMail will appear on this page. If a volume is mounted on the SmarterMail server directly, it is not displayed.
• There is no need to mount existing volumes that are already on the server. (You can on Windows, but not in Linux.)