How to Map my NAS Drive

I tryed zorin 17 a few months ago, but was totally bewildered with the network Log in section.
Let me explain.
I have several computers in my home and for the most part they all use windows 10.
They are on cat5 cable with auto assigned IP address not a fixed IP.
And there is one PC that's on linux mint 22.1 cinnamon.
I have a central storage of some 8TB SSD in Raid0 in a Qnap TS264 NAS.
Now from either the Linux PC or any of the Windows PC's I can Map into the NAS.
However in Zorin 17, 17.1, 17.2, 17.3 , I can't figure out just How to Map my NAS Drive.
At present I do not have Zorin installed ( for that reason ).
I would love to Try Zorin 17.3 ( again ) but unless I can find the right Instructions as to how to Map Network Drive, I am Staying Away from it.
Also I am a bit concerned about Brother Printers.
I read here in this topic, someone was having trouble and couldn't get their brother network printer to work.
Well my printer is a brother MFS-J880DW, quite old now but still working.
And is automatically found and configured in linux mint 22.1.
If anyone could help me out with the networking trouble, I might give it another try.

When you want to mount the nas drive permanently you need an entry in /etc/fstab. You can do this via gnome-disks or by editing the file.

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Can you describe what have you tried? If you've seen any error messages please take a screenshot for us to take a look at them.

As an aside, please note that RAID0 does not provide any redundancy to the data stored in the drives. This means that if one of the drives fails, you will lose the data in the entire array, so be sure to have backups of your data! I thought I should point this out in case you were not aware — better safe than sorry!

In regards to the printers, please open a new thread to talk about that separately.

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Just to add I have DM'd @Sparks79 with a link to my Vimeo video on how to install a Brother printer without using Brother's driver tool.

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I followed this guide since Zorin is based on Ubuntu:

Here are the steps listed out that I did:

  1. Install CIFS-Utils:

open terminal
sudo apt update
sudo apt install cifs-utils

  1. Start with a 1 time mount to make sure things are working. Create Mount Point:

sudo mkdir /mnt/<samba_share_name>

  1. Mount Samba Share. Note that you need to replace each section with your own information such as IP address and share name, and do not have the < and > when you are done:

sudo mount -t cifs //<server_ip>/<share_folder_name> /mnt/<samba_share_name_from_previous_step> -o user=,password=

  1. Verify the mount:

df -h
(should show the new mount point is loaded at the bottom)

  1. Now to make it auto mount once you verified you can mount your network share successfully. Auto-mount on boot:

open terminal
sudo nano /etc/fstab

add this line to the bottom of the file (depending on which user and folder you are trying to get:

//<server_ip>/<share_folder_name> /mnt/<samba_share_name_from_previous_step> cifs user=,password=,nounix,dir_mode=0777,file_mode=0777,uid=1000,mfsymlinks,nofail 0 0

  1. Reboot, make sure it is working and mounting automatically. If it is, proceed to the next step.

  2. Now make an SMB credentials file to more securely store login info:

open terminal
gedit ~/.smbcredentials

  1. In the window that opens type the information in:

username=

password=

  1. Save and exit the file editor. Back in terminal type:

chmod 600 ~/.smbcredentials
sudo nano /etc/fstab

  1. Edit your original auto-mount entry to remove the username and password, and now use the credentials file you made:

//<server_ip>/<share_folder_name> /mnt/<samba_share_name_from_previous_step> cifs credentials=/home/ <user_name> /.smbcredentials,nounix,dir_mode=0777,file_mode=0777,uid=1000,mfsymlinks,nofail 0 0

  1. Make shortcut on desktop to new mount:

Restart the computer.

Navigate to files -> Other Locations -> computer -> mnt

Right click your mounted network share, select copy

Navigate to files -> Home -> desktop (or wherever you want a shortcut to your mount located)

Click the three dots at the top middle of the window, select "create link". This will put a link to the folder your copied on your desktop.

  1. Alternative to a shortcut in a specific place, make a bookmark to the folder you want that is on the left pane of Files:

Navigate to files -> Other Locations -> computer -> mnt

Open the folder you want to make a bookmark for.

Click the three dots at the top middle of the window, select "add to bookmarks"