Mount Samba share without root access

Question

I have access to a Linux machine, but not root access. I can access a Samba share through smbclient. I'd like to be able to mount this share so I can access it from within Matlab. Normally, if I had root access, this would be trivial. But since I don't, I'm not sure how to proceed.

EDIT:

smbmount isn't installed on this machine. mount.cifs is installed, which I think I read is a replacement for smbmount? However, when I try it, it says I need to run it sudo.

Does smbmount (or mount.cifs) need to be suid in order for a non-root user to mount a Samba share?

Solution

Try gvfs-mount, like this:

gvfs-mount smb://user:pass@server/storage

This is what Nautilus uses to mount a remote share without root access.

From within Nautilus, you can enter smb://user:pass@server/storage at the location bar. I believe this can help you find the share from within Matlab.

Example:

gvfs-mount smb://alexsmith:mypassword@everest/myshare

Please note the fields user and pass are optional, so you could use:

gvfs-mount smb://everest/myshare