Samba Mounts in OSX from the Command Line

Even though OSX is one of the best operating systems on the market, it's not without it's shortcomings. As a veteran Mac user who spent the last 5-10 years in a Windows world, I've noticed a few quirks to OSX that have been frustratingly not-intuitive. For example, OSX's method of mounting Samba shares via the Finder's handy "Connect to Server" menu option is a little too automated. It places the mounted directory in /Volumes, which is hidden by default.

This is fine for the lamens user I guess but I like to have more control over the process. I prefer to designate where those remote Samba shares get mounted on my filesystem. By using the following command, I can specify the target directory of /web for the mount.

mount_smbfs -f 0644 -d 0750 //user@192.168.1.1 /web

The Finder recognizes the mounted directory and presents it like normal with all the other traditional functions still intact, like browsing and unmounting.