Bug 189695

Summary:	Provide additional smb kioslave using fusesmb
Product:	[Unmaintained] kio	Reporter:	Jan Essert <netz>
Component:	smb	Assignee:	Unassigned bugs mailing-list <unassigned-bugs>
Status:	RESOLVED DUPLICATE
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	felix.leimbach, nate, sheldonl
Priority:	NOR
Version:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Gentoo Packages
OS:	Unspecified
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Jan Essert 2009-04-15 09:38:34 UTC

Version:            (using KDE 4.2.2)
Installed from:    Gentoo Packages

The SMB kioslave has some disadvantages - it is quite slow, video streaming is not possible and there is no preloading of files etc...

I am no expert, but I believe that at least video streaming could be improved by using fusesmb, see

http://www.ricardis.tudelft.nl/~vincent/fusesmb/

KDE could mount fusesmb somewhere, say in ~/.local/ and then transparently use the underlying fusesmb filesystem to access smb shares.
I must admit that I do not know whether this would improve the situation, since I am not too familiar with fusesmb. What do you believe?
I suppose that a kioslave using fusesmb would be rather easy to write, since fusesmb already does all the work. I might even try myself if I have time.

I know that FUSE is not available on all platforms KDE runs on, but perhaps one could provide an additional kioslave for Linux? Or the kioslave could select which method to run?

What do you think?

Comment 1 Felix Leimbach 2009-12-31 16:57:43 UTC

I concur with the bug report and want to elaborate:

The current smb kio slave is extremely inefficient in that it tries to copy a file to a local temp directory (by default in /tmp/kde-username) before operating on it. That is bad because:

A) it takes a long time with medium to big files, leaving usesr with no visual feedback

B) it fills up your root partition to the point, that your system might be in trouble

A couple of examples I experienced recently:

1) It is impossible to open a video from a smb kio slave. When you open a (big) video file, the video player just sits there and appears to do nothing while slowly your /tmp is filling with gigabytes of junk

B) Even opening medium-sized files feels sluggish, due to them being copied over

C) Same thing when you want to burn files from a smb share ... they are all copied over locally first

D) While you can select a ISO image for burning in K3B, when you start burning it says "file not found"

So mounting the file system would be indeed the way to go, as that immediately solves all the above problems (given that your network speed is up to your demands, of course).

Comment 2 Sheldon 2011-06-07 15:57:44 UTC

*** This bug has been confirmed by popular vote. ***

Comment 3 Sheldon 2011-06-07 15:58:51 UTC

I agree that this is really necessary with the KIO SMB slave, that or KDE needs a proper VFS layer.

Looks like the SMB FUSE program is unmaintained. The last status update is from 2007.

Comment 4 Nate Graham 2017-10-28 17:09:27 UTC

Strongly agree. However such a huge project is rather too big for a single bug report. KIO-FUSE projects have come and gone over the years but none have stuck around due to the enormous amount of work required.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 330192 ***

Comment 5 Nate Graham 2018-01-31 17:21:23 UTC


*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 75324 ***