This error appears when attempting to mount a shared network drive.

~]# mount.cifs -v //example.com/share /mnt -o username=JohnDoe,password=Password01
Mount error(5) input/output error

View the /var/log/messages file to determine why there is an input/output error. In this example, there is a logon failure. In another words, the username and password being used are not valid.

~]# cat /var/log/messages
Oct 8 11:15:01 [localhost] kernel: Status code returned 0x00006d NT_STATUS_LOGON_FAILURE

tdbsam

If the share is on a remote Linux machine is a Samba share and the /etc/samba/smb.conf file has security = user and passdb backend = tdbsam, a username and password of an account from the remote Samba server should be used.

[global]
security = user
passdb backend = tbdsam

The Samba username and password are stored in the /var/lib/samba/private/passdb.tdb file on the Samba server. Tdb tools can be installed so that you can read the passdb.tdb file.

[root@server1 ~]# yum install tdb-tools

tdbdump can be used to read the passdb.tdb file. In this example, we can see that the Samba username is john.doe. The Samba password is encrypted, thus the plain text password will not be displayed.

[root@server1 ~]# tdbdump /var/lib/samba/private/passdb.tdb
{
key(15) = "USER_john.doe\00"
. . .

It is important to recognize the you need to use the username and password of the Samba account on the remote computer, not the local computer. Also, the remote computer must be configured to share the remote directory.

Active Directory

If the /etc/samba/smb.conf file has security = ADS and realm = your.domain.com and password server = your.domain.com, use a username and password of an Active Directory account that is a member of the Administrators group.

[global]
security = ADS
realm = your.domain.com
password server = your.domain.com

In the mount command, the domain name will be the name of the workgroup in the /etc/samba/smb.conf file. For example, if domain=EXAMPLE, the mount command would be:

mount.cifs -v //example.com/share /mnt -o username=example,password=example,domain=EXAMPLE