How to automount SMB shared network drives in Mac OS X Lion

Question

In Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) Apple has replaced good old SMB support. Now I can't auto connect to my shared (SMB) network drives. Workarounds? Or is this impossible? In OS X Snow Leopard, I could automatically connect my Ubuntu (SMB) shared network drives with auto_smb / auto_master (autofs configuration in /private/etc/). I made three mount points (folders) directly in '/Volumes', I used /Volumes/Data and /Volumes/webroot (both SMB shared).

Unfortunately Lion doesn't connect (automount) my network drives. I have to manually connect to the server (Ubuntu file server) in Finder, then open up Terminal to navigate to the mount points, and then it connects. This is not a workable solution. I've searched (Google/SO) but found no solutions apart from an unsupported hack.

Isn't it possible anymore to automatically connect to an SMB-shared drive during startup?

Answer 1

Here's how can automount a network drive

1. Connect to your network drive (finder > go > connect to server)

2. Enter the credentials for your login to your network drive and tick the ‘remember in keychain’

3. Open system settings > users > login items

4. Drag the icon for your network drive from your desktop to the startup items.

Source: This article

Answer 2

sudo bash
mkdir /Volumes/Network
vi /etc/fstab

Add something like the following (1 mount per line)

192.168.0.200:/video /Volumes/Network/Video url automounted,url==cifs://user:pass123@192.168.0.200/video 0 0
192.168.0.200:/music /Volumes/Network/Audio url automounted,url==cifs://user:pass123@192.168.0.200/music 0 0
192.168.0.200:/public /Volumes/Network/Public url automounted,url==cifs://user:pass123@192.168.0.200/public 0 0

run automount -vc

bash-3.2# automount -vc
automount: /net updated
automount: /home updated
automount: /Volumes/Network/Audio mounted
automount: /Volumes/Network/Watch mounted
automount: /Volumes/Network/Video mounted
automount: /Volumes/Network/Public mounted

Get out of the sudo session. Browse in finder to /Volumes/Network - whenever you go there they will now just automount. Just tried this in 10.7.3 and it works fine.

Answer 3

You can auto mount a share by dragging the mounted volume to your "Login Items" in User Accounts. That's how I do it and it's worked since 10.5.

Once caveat re SMB shares, is that with Lion the share will take about 30 seconds to mount at startup... this delay is new since Apple replaced SAMBA with their in-house implementation in Lion.

Answer 4

Answer: Can't do it. (OS X Lion 10.7.2)

I tried dragging mounted volumes into my "Login Items" but it just pops up an authentication error when I re-login. Yes, this used to work OK in Leopard, but after I upgraded to Lion, it stopped working.

Whenever I try to connect to my SMB shares using Finder, it gives me the same error.

I am able to mount SMB shares from the command-line, and they will also show up in Finder, once they're mounted, and Finder works just fine after that. So, as long as I go out to command-line to do the mounting, it's OK, but it won't work from "Login Items" or "Connect to Server"

Answer 5

Use AppleScript:

In the AppleScript editor enter this:

tell application "Finder"

try

mount volume "cifs://server/share"

end try

end tell

The save the script as an application. Add to your Login StartUp items