Bug 397705

Summary:	Dolphin + KIO SMB: Very inconvenient behavior with applications, even data loss possible
Product:	[Frameworks and Libraries] kio-extras	Reporter:	tempel.julian
Component:	Samba	Assignee:	Plasma Bugs List <plasma-bugs>
Status:	RESOLVED DUPLICATE
Severity:	normal	CC:	nate
Priority:	NOR
Version:	18.08.0
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Arch Linux
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description tempel.julian 2018-08-21 13:24:32 UTC

The KIO SMB behavior in Dolphin is very inconvenient in general.
Some examples:

Browse an SMB share with Dolphin and open an archive in it with Ark: Even with this KDE program, the archive gets fully copied to a local place before it can be opened.

Browse an SMB share with Dolphin and open a video file with basically anything but VLC (e.g. mpv): The whole video needs to get copied to a local place first before it can be played.

And the worst: Browse an SMB share with Dolphin and open a LibreOffice document. Edit the file and save it. Then close it and open it again: The changes haven't been saved, they are entirely gone and there was no indicator for this to warn the user!

On the contrary, everything described above does work well when using a GTK file browser like Thunar with gvfs-smb installed and running: Videos and archives open instantly and the changes in the LibreOffice document actually get saved on the SMB share.

-> The current KIO SMB behavior is outright terrible and even dangerous to some extent.

Comment 1 Nate Graham 2018-08-21 21:07:32 UTC

I fully agree, and KIO's Samba functionality is very disappointing to me too. That said, we can't have bug reports that are general gripes or that list many issues, as they are un-actionable and don't tend to be satisfactorily resolved. See https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved/Bug_Reporting#One_issue_per_bug_report


> Browse an SMB share with Dolphin and open an archive in it with Ark: Even with
> this KDE program, the archive gets fully copied to a local place before it can
> be opened.
Sounds like a bug in Ark, please file it there.


> Browse an SMB share with Dolphin and open a video file with basically anything
> but VLC (e.g. mpv): The whole video needs to get copied to a local place first
> before it can be played.
I worked hard to help make even VLC work, BTW. :) See https://pointieststick.wordpress.com/2018/01/17/videos-on-samba-shares/
More generally, this requires fixing Bug 75324.


> And the worst: Browse an SMB share with Dolphin and open a LibreOffice document.
> Edit the file and save it. Then close it and open it again: The changes haven't
> been saved, they are entirely gone and there was no indicator for this to warn
> the user!
This sounds very bad and we need a dedicated bug to track it! Might be alleviated a bit by fixing Bug 40115.


Marking as a duplicate of Bug 75324 since fixing that would resolve everything here. In the meantime, since getting that isn't likely anytime soon, please feel free to file individual bug reports for the other issues.

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

Comment 2 tempel.julian 2018-08-22 12:18:38 UTC

Thanks for your response, Nathan.
I probably should have worded my tracker entry a bit differently to make it appear less like a typical user rant.
I will create tickets for the single components as you have proposed.
Also great work regarding VLC, I was really astounded to see it miraculously simply work as expected. ;)

I just wonder why we even need a userspace filesystem representation like KIO/gvfs for browsing and accessing SMB shares?
Wouldn't it be possible for GUI programs to make use of smbtree or NMB features to discover shares and then to mount them via CIFS in kernel?

Comment 3 tempel.julian 2018-08-22 12:52:45 UTC

The LibreOffice issue:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=397742

The Ark issue:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=397741