CentOS - make Samba share available via nginx

I have a collection of files on a Windows share named \\winserver\bucket.

On a CentOS server, I am able to mount it so the content is available for perusal. I created an empty directory named /mnt/bucket for mounting.

sudo mount -t cifs -o credentials=/root/bucket.ini \\\\winserver\\bucket /mnt/bucket

The Windows credentials are stored in a relatively secure file (/root/bucket.ini), and I plan to put the mount directive in /etc/fstab at some point.

The CentOS server is running nginx, and I need to be able to serve the files in the share, download only, via http links.

As an example, someone clicking on a browser link named http://CentOSname/bucket/item/gizmo.pdf should receive \\winserver\bucket\item\gizmo.pdf as a downloaded file.

• What's the best way to make this happen?
• Does the nginx user account need to acquire proper permissions so it can access the files?
• Are the parameters used to mount the Windows volume adequate for sharing it out to nginx?

--- Edit ---

Tero's answer does not work for me.

I added location and root parameters to the nginx.conf, and I get a 403 Forbidden error:

server {
    listen       80;
    listen       [::]:80;
    server_name  _;
    root         /usr/share/nginx/html;

    location /bucket/ {
       root /mnt/bucket;
    }

Adding autoindex on to see the directory contents produced the same error.

nginx can serve any file that is available on any path. So, all you need to do is to mount the share like you have done, and then configure nginx to serve files from that directory using the root directive.

You also need to make sure that permissions on share are set so that nginx user can access the files. https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/68079/mount-cifs-network-drive-write-permissions-and-chown has instructions how to set the share permissions.