Many applications aren't aware of network shares that aren't mounted. For instance, without mounting them they aren't accessible from a terminal. I believe its only the file manager that's actually able to access shares like that but I might be mistaken.
Yes, if you want JRiver and other apps to access the network share, you must mount it.
I've seen questions on mounting network shares here and in other posts; it can be tricky, and if you do it wrong it may mount, but you won't have rights to it.
Although I am not a Linux guru, I have used it for a number of years, and perhaps I can help out a little:
(Linux gurus, please feel free to jump in.) I have successfully imported all the files on my 4TB Samba share to my JRiver library by the following:
I routinely mount network shares from both my Windows Server 2008 and my Linux samba server in various Linux distros.
After much experimentation, I have settled on the following as the least painlful way to do this:
1st you will need a folder to mount the share to:
sudo mkdir /dirname creates a folder on the file system root
Next you need to give yourself rights to it:
chown username /dirname -R Makes you the owner instead of root
sudo chmod 0777 /dirname -R Gives everybody full rights; if you don't want that, 0755 will give you full rights and others read and execute only
You need to do that part only once.
Now that you have a place to mount the share, you need to use the cifs-utils to mount it.
Most newer Linux distros have this installed, but if not:
sudo apt-get install cifs-utils should do it; or use your package manager.
The syntax is a little hairy, but this works to mount shares on my Windows Server 2008 and my Samba server:
sudo mount.cifs //prad810.prociak.lan/t /t -o user=prociak.lan/myron,uid=1000
That is:
sudo mount.cifs //servername.domainname/sharename /dirname -o user=servername/username,uid=1000
Or, if not in a domain just:
sudo mount.cifs //computername/sharename /dirname -o user=computername/username,uid=1000
You should be asked for a password twice, once for the remote computer and once for the local Linux machine.
This should give you the same rights that you have when logging on to the remote computer directly.
The uid number does matter, but if you are the first or only user on the Linux box it will probably be 1000 or 1001
To verify, open the user manager for your distro and check it.
So, the user=username is the name of the user on the remote computer, and the uid=1000 is the identifyer for you
on the Linux box; it determines who has rights to the share once mounted. Don't forget the comma.
Note: If for some reason the remote computer is not found, substitute the ip address for computername as in:
sudo mount.cifs //192.168.1.101/sharename /dirname -o user=username,uid=1000
Sorry if this sounds confusing, but once you get the syntax right, just copy it to a text file.
Then, next time you need it, just copy-paste it into the terminal app.