How to mount/unmount webdav server directory using Terminal

Question

I use OS X 10.10.1 and I want to mount a HTTPS webdav server directory as a volume on my local machine using Terminal.

I found this utility -- mount_webdav -- which seems to work - I created a mountpoint /Volumes/mpt and was able to mount it, but I am unable to see the volume and unmount it.

I used the -v switch to set a volume name 'files' when mounting, expecting to see the volume listed as /Volumes/mpt/files but this does not happen - there is no such volume, although the contents of the server directory appear in /Volumes/mpt.

I don't quite understand this. If the volume doesn't appear how can I unmount it?

Answer 1

Command line mounting and Finder never play nicely with each other. A simpler way that leverages all the backend stuff that Finder does is to simply use the open command. i.e.

open smb://server/mountpoint/

But that doesn't work well with WebDAV servers, as open will send all http/https links to the default browser by default.

Another way is to use an Applescript to tell Finder to mount the drive. You can save the script as an app, which you can then call from the open command or via the GUI, and it will let Finder handle the mount just as it would if you used Cmd-K. Or you could always just use it inside an osascript call from the terminal, via an alias or traditional bash script. As an example:

tell application "Finder"
    try
        mount volume "https://[e-mail]/mountpoint"
    end try
end tell

I have a "MountDrives.app" script/app that has lived in my /Applications directory for years now; It runs at startup and lets me quickly re-mount heavily used shares quickly and easily.