Title: cifs_mount_debug_notes Subject: Steps to debug mounting a windows share Search for cifs kernel module find /lib/modules/ -name "cifs*" uname -a Load module modprobe cifs Verify kernel module is loaded grep cif /proc/filesystems nodev cifs Try to mount: mount -t cifs -o iocharset=utf8,username='DOMAIN.COM\USERNAME' //SERVER.DOMAIN.COM/MYSHARE smb_MYSHARE mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on //fa.DOMAIN.COM/DataMart, missing codepage or helper program, or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so dmesg CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -22 Turn on debugging and try mount again echo 1 >/proc/fs/cifs/cifsFYI mount -t cifs -o iocharset=utf8,username='DOMAIN.COM\USERNAME' //SERVER.DOMAIN.COM/MYSHARE smb_MYSHARE mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on //fa.DOMAIN.COM/DataMart, missing codepage or helper program, or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so dmesg fs/cifs/cifsfs.c: Devname: //fa.DOMAIN.COM/DataMart flags: 0 fs/cifs/connect.c: CIFS VFS: in cifs_mount as Xid: 4 with uid: 0 fs/cifs/connect.c: Username: DOMAIN.COM\USERNAME fs/cifs/connect.c: CIFS VFS: leaving cifs_mount (xid = 4) rc = -97 CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -22 echo 0 > /proc/fs/cifs/LinuxExtensionsEnabled Look at all the settings: for i in `find /proc/fs/cifs/ -type f -print`; do echo ''; echo $i; cat $i; done /proc/fs/cifs/LookupCacheEnabled 1 /proc/fs/cifs/SecurityFlags 0x7 /proc/fs/cifs/MultiuserMount 0 /proc/fs/cifs/LinuxExtensionsEnabled 1 /proc/fs/cifs/Experimental 0 /proc/fs/cifs/OplockEnabled 1 /proc/fs/cifs/traceSMB 0 /proc/fs/cifs/cifsFYI 1 /proc/fs/cifs/DebugData Display Internal CIFS Data Structures for Debugging --------------------------------------------------- CIFS Version 1.48 Active VFS Requests: 0 Servers: Shares: In the end I discovered you must also emerge mount-cifs in gentoo: emerge net-fs/mount-cifs