How to mount and unmount a SMB share on Mac OS X (using mount_smbfs)

mount_smbfs.sh

#Mounting the share is a 2 stage process:
# 1. Create a directory that will be the mount point
# 2. Mount the share to that directory

#Create the mount point:
mkdir share_name

#Mount the share:
mount_smbfs //username:[email protected]/share_name share_name/

#Unmount the share:
umount share_name

Thank you! This speeds up my transfer of over a gig of data tremendously. Finder is HORRIBLE!

This requires root on macOS 10.15.7, and the resulting mount will be root-owned and require root to access.

@j3pic, since macOS 10.15 you can still mount to your user directory without root.
For example use shortcut: ~/your_share
It will get mounted in: /Users/your_username/your_share

Also check "man mount_smbfs" - it teaches you about soft, sessionencrypt and shareencrypt parameters. Very useful :)

@Traace No, it doesn't work unless you're root.

If you try it from a non-root account, one of the following two errors will happen:

If the mount-point (~/your_share in your example) is an existing directory, you'll get this error:

mount_smbfs: mount error: /Users/your_username/your_share: File exists

If the directory does not exist, you'll get this error instead:

mount: realpath /Users/your_username/your_share: No such file or directory

If you do it as root, the operation will succeed (edit: if the mount-point directory exists), but the mount will be owned by root.

It doesn't matter if you use mount -t smbfs ... or if you call mount_smbfs directly.

This saved me today, thanks for posting!

@j3pic. Something else must be going on.
On Monterey I just did: mount -t smbfs //[email protected]/share ~/mnt. It mounted without error and I can access it without needing sudo.

@j3pic @easp The user must be an admin in order to run the mount or mount_smbfs commands because both exist in /sbin. It will be owned by the account that runs the command. In my case, I am trying to run some form of this command in a script from Jamf for a Standard user to access. I have been able to make this work by doing running this as root:
sudo -u localUser mount -t smbfs //[email protected]/share ~/mnt

@spartaaa-git Why do people keep insisting that this works? It doesn't. My account was admin. You have to be root. The command you suggested exhibits the same behavior I described originally.

@easp Monterey deprecates all kinds of features on Intel Macs. I won't be upgrading to it.

If you're wondering why this won't work for connecting with a very old share (Win98!) in monterey and you see:

joey@ghostbook mnt % mount_smbfs //tinyking98/c tinyking
mount_smbfs: server connection failed: Unknown error: -5996

this shows up in Console.app:
smb1_smb_negotiate: Support for the server TINYKING98 has been deprecated (PreXP), disconnecting

adding this to /etc/nsmb.conf doesn't help:

[default]
# allow SMB 1+2+3
protocol_versmap=7

edit:
It turns out this notice is present in older versions too; google shows a complaint on El Capitan, I got it in Catalina.
you can find the source of the error log here:
https://github.com/apple-opensource-mirror/smb/blob/98c9fff3ade4b449013c0d106c45b6ffb35cf609/kernel/netsmb/smb_smb.c#L421

else where in that codebase, we see that
#define SMB_ENETFSNOPROTOVERSSUPP -5996
😭

it only seems to show when using the mount_smbfs tool and not via the Finder.

I have an old PPC eMac running 10.5.8 (Leopard) and the mount succeeds on there!

Can update the gist for Monterey which requires adding WORKGROUP?

mount_smbfs //'WORKGROUP;username':password@remote-host/shared local-mount-point/

mount_smbfs: mount error: /Users/machenchi/shareDev: No such file or directory
But I have made a dir with mkdir /Users/machenchi/shareDev

@vaxilicaihouxian @mwmcode I had the same issue. I fixed it by putting the last argument (i.e the mounting point) in quotes. So, the original command becomes:

mount_smbfs //username:[email protected]/share_name "share_name/"

For those who keep getting File exists without sudo it may be that you already have that drive mounted in Finder. In my case I was exploring the drive in finder. When I unmounted that it worked a charm.

Details and an automation script available: https://stackoverflow.com/a/78877529/945789

For those who keep getting File exists without sudo it may be that you already have that drive mounted in Finder. In my case I was exploring the drive in finder. When I unmounted that it worked a charm.

Details and an automation script available: https://stackoverflow.com/a/78877529/945789

so it is!

Just tested and confirmed this also works:

mount -t smbfs //username:[email protected]/sharename mountfolder

You can leave the password off and be prompted for it.
You can leave the username off if it matches your current username.

mount -t smbfs //server.name/sharename mountfolder