There is a folder you see primarily in OS/X Server called « /Shared Items ». It is the default location for sharepoints. If you create a subfolder (e.g., « SharedData ») there and share it, then when it mounts on the client, it will appear by default as « /Volumes/SharedData ». Furthermore, when you specify what to mount, you can use « afp://server.domain/SharedData ».
What I wanted to do was to place a lab data folder within a user's folder. For years, I had had it under /Shared Items, but it turns out that it is simply easier to deal with things in OS/X when they are in user folders than when they are elsewhere in the directory hierarchy.
I created a “data” user and moved by data hierarchy into its home folder: « ~data/Data ». I marked this folder as shared, and then tried mounting it remotely. When I tried « afp://server.domain/Data », it failed. When I tried « afp://server.domain/Users/data/Data », it mounted the server's /Users folder (but at least it allowed access to the Data folder as « /Volumes/Users/data/Data ». But this is far from satisfactory.
It took me quite a lot of searching online, but finally a tangential remark led me to success.
It turns out that each user is also allowed to have a « Shared Items » folder that operates more or less the same as the one in the root directory of the system. This is parallel to the user-level Applications folder that can be used to install apps privately (but very few apps actually use this for some reason). Another example is that there are both user-level and root-level Library folders: these are both in heavy and regular use.
I now made a folder « ~data/Shared Items » and moved Data under it. I also made a symlink at « ~data/Data » pointing at « ~data/Shared Items/Data », mostly so scripts could avoid the space in the name. I then shared « /Users/data/Shared Items/Data ». Now it worked the same as it used to when it was in the system « /Shared Items » folder, yet it would now allow me to deal with « data » as a user with a big home folder, which in certain situations is very handy.
This is a very useful trick, I believe.
As for the space in « Shared Items », I find it unbelievable that Apple would do such a thing. I suppose it's not terrible that users are allowed to have spaces in filenames, but for a major system component to have a space, well, that's just unbelievable. SharedItems would have been fine, or even Shared_Items, but « Shared Items »? Pfui. And the same for things like « Application Support » and « Contextual Menu Items » (and yet, they got it right for tons of other ones: ColorSync, PrivilegedHelperTools, QuickTimeStreaming, ...).
