[Thunar-dev] Network access in thunar?

[David Tenser]

On 8/5/06, David Tenser <djst.mozilla at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 8/5/06, Benedikt Meurer <benedikt.meurer at unix-ag.uni-siegen.de> wrote:
>
> > Stavros Giannouris wrote:
> > >>In Windows, a "samba" share is like
> > >>any other folder to the applications, because the support is
> > >>implemented in the system-level. In other words, it doesn't matter to
> > >>mplayer2.exe if I double-clicked on "C:\file.avi" or
> > >>"\\share\file.avi". To the application, both paths point to a file.
> > >>
> > >>This kind of transparent network support is what I'm really asking
> > >>for, but maybe it's not suitable in this Thunar-specific mailing list.
> > >>Gnome seems (?) to have started to implement this, but it looks like
> > >>they implemented it in the application-level (e.g . totem has support
> > >>for smb://.. URIs while rhytmbox doesn't).
> > >>
> > >>I have all my media (music, movies, etc) stored on my server which I
> > >>can access with samba or ssh. If I want to access these files, I need
> > >>to use e.g. Totem instead of Xfce's media player since the latter has
> > >>no support for network shares.
> > >
> > > If you have some samba shares that you need to have constant access
> > to,
> > > you can always create an fstab entry for them and mount them through
> > > smbfs/cifs. Then all will be transparent.
> > > The other solutions (like smb:// uris in gnome-vfs) are mere
> > > workarounds to enable occasional & quick access for non-priviledged
> > > users to those shares.
> >
> > Exactly. And that's also the reason why I'm not sure that smb support
> > should be provided by the file manager.
>
>
> I don't know the optimal solution, but to the average user, editing
> /etc/fstab isn't exactly convenient. I know it can be done but I stopped
> doing it because the mount points become invalid after restoring from
> hibernation (which I use often on my laptop), but that's another bug
> unrelated to Thunar.
>
> Building a file manager today without support for network shares just
> seems strange to me. However, I somewhat agree that implementing the support
> directly in the file manager isn't ideal. It should be seamless to the user
> on another level. Perhaps auto-mounting network shares in the same way as
> USB-disks are mounted? E.g. using smbfs and mount it to
> /media/[server]/[share] so all other applications would get a valid URI.
> Just brainstorming.
>


I forgot to make my point: Until the optimal system-level solution is
implemented, Thunar simply needs network support built-in (or via plugins of
course). Not being able to access the network at all in Xfce without hacking
fstab and installing non-standard packages is not sane.

[Sorry if this message appeared twice, I first sent it from the wrong e-mail
address and I'm not sure if it will get through to the mailing-list.]
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