In older Ubuntu releases, you were able to access the SMB shares mounted with Nautilus by going into the ~/.gvfs/ directory. I found it very convenient, since I like to use Nautilus to mount the shares, but do all disk operations (copy, mv, find etc.) using command line.

I now have Ubuntu 13.04, and even though I can mount the share and use it with Nautilus (which I never use), I am unable to find the actual mount point. Is it still somewhere? Or has it been abandoned? Can I get it back?

I know that I can mount the shares using CIFS and /etc/fstab, but I'd rather use the user space. That way, when I install a new system or transfer my home to another machine, my preferences (including credentials) stay in my home directory and I don't need to worry about updating fstab.

Also, I do not want to mount it manually with sudo (with sudo mount -t cifs ...). Yes, I could create an alias or a script, but then I would have to either type my password every time or store my password in a credentials file. And type the sudo password. And then each time I encounter a new share, I'd need to remember how to create a credentials file. So yes, I might end up with this solution, but I would rather not change my current habits, if it is possible.

Furthermore, there is the matter of other users for which I often provide a simple command-line solution. In 13.04, this is no longer possible (for example, because the users to whom I provide the solution are not allowed to sudo mount on their machines).

In any case, I'm curious as to what happened to gvfs and why I can't see the mounted directories.