Remounting network drive on startup

[jrobins]

Hi,

I have only owned a mac for about 2 weeks and have a problem i hope someone can help with.

On my network i have one PC, a powerbook and a network attached storage (nas) device that i use to keep all of my files on for the obvious reasons.

I can manually navigate to the shared directory on the nas with the powerbook no problem. The issue is that i have to do this everytime i powercycle the machine. On windows i would have solved this problem by doing a map network drive and making sure i select the option to reconnect on startup - how do i do the same with the mac?

My current solution is to just start iTunes as the library is stored on the nas.

 

[feakbeak]

I wrote an Automator script to do the trick. I have two shares on my PC that I often connect to. I made an Automator script and added that script to my Login Items in the user preferences. (You have to save the workflow off as an Application, I think they call it)

I have noticed though that after long periods of time (many hours, a day or two) those network shares just seem to "go away" and I have to reconnect. I leave my Mac on almost all the time, I wish the network connections were more persistent. I have never had this problem between Windows machines.

Not a big deal, I'm just picky. I had wanted to do this before Automator, but wasn't sure how. I'm sure I could have written an AppleScript to do it, but I am lazy and didn't feel like looking it up. It's easy with Automator, use the Finder actions for network connections.

Like you, I had wanted to run my iTunes music library directly from the network (I don't have a NAS, but I have much more HDD space on my PC than on my Mac mini). The network connectivity for running all my music from the network was not reliable. I ended up moving my library to my Mac mini. Maybe it would be different if my mini was wired (100 MB) but with the wi-fi it just wasn't feasable for me. I move files across the network all the time without issue, but maintaining a constant connection and managing my library over wireless was just too much of a pain, IMO.

 

[mkrishnan]

My current solution is to just start iTunes as the library is stored on the nas.

I'm curious about this too -- I don't have a NAS yet, but I want one. So...first, do you have to manually reconnect if you lose the connection by virtue of leaving the network or putting the computer to sleep? And do you mean to say that, once iTunes is setup to read music off the NAS, it will automatically connect to the NAS if it needs to (without the manual stuff)? If you do lose the connection by leaving the network or sleeping, and iTunes is still running, will telling it to do something, like play a song, reconnect you?

Also, is there some way to make an alias to the drive and put it on the desktop or in the dock, and then click it when you're disconnected, to do this for you? For instance, while it's mounted, you could drag it from the desktop to the right side of the dock (to the left of trash)....

 

[csubear]

What kinda of file sharing protocals does your nas support?

For me I use nfs. Its trival to put an entry into your netinfo directory that will cause OS X's automounter to always mount an nfs directory. I would assume that you may be able to do the same for afp of smb.

 

[jrobins]

I believe it uses NFS - i will investigate this netinfo directory of which you speak (sorry i have come from a very windows background).

In response to your questions Mohan - I only have to reconnect if i power down - the connection persists during sleep. Yes once i start iTuens it automatically reconnects to find its library and then this will stay the whole time i have the machine on.

 

[csubear]

Just do a google on nfs OS X, you should find a few pages that talk about adding an entry into the mounts directory in netinfo.