Mac OS X in a Nutshell

Mounting Network Disks

Mac OS X gives you a number of ways to mount a remote filesystem (or a segment of one) as a disk accessible through the Finder. The remote system need not run under Mac OS; you can, for example, use SMB to connect to Windows machines, and NFS to mount filesystems on Unix computers.^[5]

Mounting Through the Finder

The Finder’s Connect to Server (

-K) command gives you a simple interface for mounting remote disks locally. As Figure 7-8 shows, the Connect to Server window contains three ways to specify the server you’d like to mount:

Figure 7-8. Connecting to an AFP server

At menu

This menu contains a list of the last few servers you’ve connected to through the Finder, as well as servers you’ve placed among your Favorites (see Section 2.7). Selecting one and then clicking the window’s Connect button will connect to it.

Network browser

If your machine is part of a network that uses the Rendezvous or the SLP protocol to advertise available network services, then you can use this column view to browse through them. Selecting a disk or server in this table and then clicking Connect will initiate a connection.

Clicking the triangle button to the right of the At menu hides the network browser.

Address text field

Here you can type in the URL that points to the disk you wish ...