[SOLVED] Mac OSX Samba / CIFS through SSH tunnel error The server 'localhost' is available on your computer

Published September 11th, 2013

Finder identifies smb://127.0.0.1 as a local filesystem and refuses to mount port 445 even if you've set up an SSH tunnel using -L 445:localhost:445

The solution is to alias your lo0 interface to 127.0.0.2 and Finder doesn't see this as a local address.

sudo ifconfig lo0 127.0.0.2 alias up

Create the ssh tunnel and map to your Samba / CIFS server

ssh user@remote -L 127.0.0.2:445:smbhost:445

Now you can open the share in Finder