Setting up my Mac Mini

September 23, 2026

The mac mini -- SMB for lightroom, adobe

On my old Windows/lightroom setup, I exported my photos from my linux machine via SMB (samba). I could switch to NFS, and a read conflicting reports on whether SMB or NFS is better -- but the easy path right now to get things going is to utilize the SMB exports from my linux machine.

SMB mounts

Use Finder, Cmd+K to get the "connect to server" window.
Type smb://host
click Connect

For some reason cmd+K doesn't work on my Mac console, There is another way, but there is a trick. Use finder and then the "Go" selection in the main menu. Where the heck is "Go" I say. It is way at the top of the screen? Who ever would have thought, but this is a Mac thing. Whenever an app is the "active app" all that stuff along the top changes to go with it.

So use Go, and then "connect to server" should be at the bottom of the menu.

Finder and cmd+K work from my VNC session. Using that I launch the "connect to server" thing and give it:

smb://trona.

Now it is asking for a user and password. It turns out that samba on linux manages its own set of users with passwords. I have no idea, and no record of what I set up long ago (10+ years). Perhaps I can add a new user and password? Back to my linux machine to try to sort this out.

Samba users and passwords on Linux

I type this:

pdbedit -L
tom:1004:Tom Trebisky

Apparently samba users are real linux users, but samba manages its own password scheme. Samba related files are:

/etc/samba
/var/lib/samba/private

Naturally there is no way to display the password I set, but I can change it. To allow me to revert back to the old password in the unlikely even that I want to run my old Windows setup without going through whatever hell windows will run me through to set a new password, I do this:

su
cd /var/lib/samba/private
mkdir OLD
cp *.tdb OLD

Next I do this:

#smbpasswd -a new_sambausername
smbpasswd tom

I set the password "Pickles".

Back on the mac

Now I give it my newly minted password and it shows me 3 volumes that I could mount:

photos
public
tom

I choose "photos". It gives me an error the first time. I try again and it mounts. It shows me the photos mounted on:

//tom@trona:photos on /Volumes/photos (smbfs,...)

This is determined by typing "mount" in a bash window.

Windows is Hell

I need to start up Lightroom on my old windows machine to get some files and information. It gets stuck in some endless mess, no doubt because I changed the SMB credentials. I remember this being hell and chaos when I first set it up. I finally got lucky, crossed my fingers, and ran away. But here we are again.

I see that Windows does NOT use separate credentials for SMB. It uses standard user account credentials. So, I just need to set my windows password to "Pickles". I type Ctrl-Alt-Del then select "change a password". This does not work, and I give up. Windows sucks.

SMB mounts on startup

We just had a power outage and I shut the mac down for the first time. Now that it is up, my SMB mount is gone.

The thing to do is to add this to my "Login items" as follows:

Launch finder
Use Go up at the top and "Connect to Server"
Enter - smb://trona/photos
Enter my username and password (see above)
Check the "remember password in keychain" box
up to here is the usual game.
Launch System Settings
go to General, Login items
at "Open at Login" use the + button
navigate to the mounted share in the sidebar under Locations
click the "open" button when I select photos
It shows it as added to the Login items list.

For the record, there is another way. You can edit /etc/auto_master and create a local map file. Here is an article on this more advanced method. This method performs the mount as needed when some application attempts to access the share.

Automounting SMB shares

Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!