Comment 7 for bug 1095294

There are varying instructions out there, but it may be the case that /usr/bin/smbmount had its permissions set specifically so that non-root users could execute it and mount shares, as explained in https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Samba/SambaClientGuide . In that same guide there are ways to allow non-root access for mount.cifs, such as by using groups (rather than chmod-ing the executable), and to automatically mount a share on startup (by using /etc/fstab, not /etc/rc.local).