KDE4 Mounting network shares and accessing them from apps

So I am working to get my machine in a very useable state for my family, particularly my wife. She uses OpenOffice now so concern there.

I am trying to mount remote smb location, and have it such that she can access those locations directly from OpenOffice / LibreOffice. I am using KNetAttach, and am able to successfully establish a connection to a remote SMB share or ssh (FreeBSD server) location. But I am suspicious that this is not a 'true' mount. Using terminal I cannot find any mounted folders for this location. And from the office program I cannot find the smb path.

Ideally I would be able to mount this (and have it re-mount automatically during boot up) so that it appears as a folder that is selectable from programs. Ideally I would like to do this via the KDE4 desktop, but doing it from command line is fine too.

What am I missing, where should I point my eyes?

Thanks again,
P.M.
 
So can I do 'real' mounts to a network share, using the GUI, or should I abandon that and do it command line?
 
My preferred file managers:
  1. Dolphin
  2. Files (x11-fm/nautilus)
– currently 4.14.10 and 3.18.5, respectively.

… smb … OpenOffice / LibreOffice. … I cannot find any mounted folders for this location. And from the office program I cannot find the smb path.

I often wondered about the absence of a relevant mount point after using smb:// in, for example, Dolphin.

Whilst not having a technical understanding of the causes of peculiarities, I typically found myself using Files instead of Dolphin whenever I needed to use Windows file servers at work.

Last week the peculiarities were greater than usual. Whilst editing one remote file – an .xlsx workbook – with two different computers (one FreeBSD-based, one Windows 7) in different rooms at different times, I realised that changes saved by LibreOffice Calc were not suitably effective until long after an apparent save. At the time of writing I do not have access to the server, to reproduce the symptom, but if I recall correctly:
  • the one end result, of all saves by the application, was not saved to the SMB server until after the file was closed by the application.
Later in the day I vaguely recall seeing an SMB-specific message in LibreOffice – maybe in a status bar; maybe whilst I worked with Files in lieu of Dolphin. (I didn't stop to take notes, too busy at the time, sorry.)

I aim to review things next week. Hopefully with enough time for attention to file locking behaviours and so on.

In the meantime, I found a few things of interest:
  1. KDE bug 253547 – Regression: since 4.5.2, KDE downloads multimedia files instead of letting applications stream them (2010-10-07)
  2. at freedesktop.org, The [FONT=Courier New]Exec[/FONT] key
  3. in openSUSE Forums, Libreoffice and samba remote files problem (2014-10-03) – this puts points 1 and 2 in context
  4. gvfs - How do applications open from/save to smb shares? - Ask Ubuntu (2012-12-02)

Desktop files for LibreOffice Calc

$ grep -i exec /usr/local/lib/libreoffice/share/xdg/calc.desktop
Code:
Exec=libreoffice --calc %U
Exec=libreoffice --calc
$ grep -i exec /usr/local/share/applications/libreoffice-calc.desktop
Code:
Exec=libreoffice --calc %U
Exec=libreoffice --calc
$ grep -v \# /usr/local/share/applications/libreoffice-calc.desktop
Code:
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Terminal=false
Icon=libreoffice-calc
Type=Application
Categories=Office;Spreadsheet;X-Red-Hat-Base;X-MandrivaLinux-Office-Spreadsheets;
Exec=libreoffice --calc %U
MimeType=application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet;application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet-template;application/vnd.sun.xml.calc;application/vnd.sun.xml.calc.template;application/msexcel;application/vnd.ms-excel;application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet;application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.macroenabled.12;application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.template;application/vnd.ms-excel.template.macroenabled.12;application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.binary.macroenabled.12;text/csv;application/x-dbf;text/spreadsheet;application/csv;application/excel;application/tab-separated-values;application/vnd.lotus-1-2-3;application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.chart;application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.chart-template;application/x-dbase;application/x-dos_ms_excel;application/x-excel;application/x-msexcel;application/x-ms-excel;application/x-quattropro;application/x-123;text/comma-separated-values;text/tab-separated-values;text/x-comma-separated-values;text/x-csv;application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet-flat-xml;application/vnd.ms-works;application/clarisworks;application/x-iwork-numbers-sffnumbers;
Name=LibreOffice Calc
GenericName=Spreadsheet
GenericName[en]=Spreadsheet
Comment=Perform calculations, analyze information and manage lists in spreadsheets by using Calc.
Comment[en]=Perform calculations, analyze information and manage lists in spreadsheets by using Calc.
StartupNotify=true
X-GIO-NoFuse=true
Keywords=Accounting;Stats;OpenDocument Spreadsheet;Chart;Microsoft Excel;Microsoft Works;OpenOffice Calc;ods;xls;xlsx;
InitialPreference=5
StartupWMClass=libreoffice-calc
X-KDE-Protocols=file,http,ftp,webdav

Actions=NewDocument;
[Desktop Action NewDocument]
Name=New Spreadsheet
Name[en]=New Spreadsheet
Exec=libreoffice --calc

Streamlining and automation

Ideally I would be able to mount this (and have it re-mount automatically during boot up) so that it appears as a folder that is selectable from programs. Ideally I would like to do this via the KDE4 desktop, but doing it from command line is fine too.

For SMB, GNOME Files (on KDE 4.14.3) does not work as expected with my default keyring. So it's less streamlined than I'd like. For this, I should probably follow up in a separate topic.
 
I aim to review things next week. Hopefully with enough time for attention to file locking behaviours and so on.

Cross reference post 10 under Mount cloud storage locally

With a focus on GUIs, I tested a few combinations of applications and services. (Not enough time for attention to file locking behaviours, sorry.) Improved ease of use will probably require fixes or enhancements in areas such as these:
  • GNOME
  • KDE
  • LibreOffice
  • ownCloud
  • Nextcloud.
In as few words as possible:
  • for timely saves to file servers, GNOME Files is preferable to KDE Dolphin
  • use of Files for an SMB or WebDAV connection can create and use a subdirectory in the [FONT=Courier New]~/.gvfs[/FONT] mount point; however, if the Open dialogue of LibreOffice is used to browse that subdirectory, then an attempt to open a file will fail
  • when the LibreOffice interface to Servers is used for WebDAV with an ownCloud or Nextcloud service where the tail of the URL is [FONT=Courier New]/remote.php/webdav[/FONT] – with or without a trailing [FONT=Courier New]/[/FONT] (and note the absence of a user ID from the URL) – there is no prompt for user authentication, so the file server can not be browsed (it appears empty)
  • when Dolphin is used for WebDAV with the same type of service, there is no prompt for user authentication, so the file server can not be browsed.
One of the issues affecting Dolphin use of WebDAV may be worked around by manually editing:

[FONT=Courier New]~/.kde4/share/config/kio_httprc[/FONT]

– but still, I should prefer Files to Dolphin for WebDAV (and SMB) connections.

Further reading:
 
Back
Top