KDE gui applications such as Dolphin or kde gui componenents such as the File Open dialog fail to show the contents of some automounted nfs partitions. I have attached a screenshot to illustrate the issue. I have captured 4 different applications attempting to display the contents of /kobaltnet/goudsmid/bin /kobaltnet is the base mount point for my autofs mounted nfs shares. goudsmid is one such share. 1. In the top-left you see Konsole running a bash session. It can list the contents of the directory just fine 2. Top-right is dolphin, which just shows an empty directory 3. Bottom-left is nautilus, which shows the directory contents just fine 4. Bottom-right is the file-open dialog for okular, listing an empty directory Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): I'm not sure I chose the right component. I don't really know which part of kde/plasma is responsible for this. Anyway, I see this with 5.4.1-3 and up (also the updates in updates-testing). There are a few remarkable details that are important: - this only happens with nfs shares I'm not the owner of (my id is janssege in the screenshot, the nfs share is owned by user goudsmid). When I access shares I do own, this behaviour doesn't show. - the behaviour starts from the second level down the mount point. In the example, I can see the contents of /kobaltnet/goudsmid, but not of any of its subdirectories. - hitting F5 on the empty contents does shortly reveal the contents (it flashes a fraction of a second) and the the window goes blank again. So this suggests the directory contents is properly written but then discarded from some reason. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Set up an nfs share which is automounted, not owned by you, but with proper group access permissions 2. Open dolphin and navigate to the mounted share. The contents will be visible. 3. Continue to navigate to a subdirectory. 4. Hit F5 Actual Results: 3. The contents of the subdirectory won't be shown 4. The actual contents briefly flashes in the window, but won't show permanently. Expected Results: Normal navigation through the share and all of it's subdirectories. The other applications (konsole/bash and nautilus) illustrate there's no access/file permission issue causing this. This change is fairly recent. I know I recently updated to plasma 5.4.1 from 5.3.x. However the KDE frameworks were also recently updated, so perhaps that's the culprit.
This is also reported in the Fedora bug tracker as https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1269987
Some further evolution. It looks like this bug is fixed for kf5 based applications. Current Dolphin (dolphin-15.12.1-1.fc23.x86_64) no longer has this issue. KDE 4 based applications still behave erratically. For example, current okular still won't properly show the contents of an nfs share not owned by the logged in user. Note also that even though the folder contents is not shown (or only briefly), I can still navigate deeper down the hierarchy by typing the the address bar. This still correctly autocompletes as well. So it's really something in the folder content view area that's messed up.
It would really be great if whatever was needed to fix this for kf5 based applications to be applied to the kde4 environment as well. This is a blocker for most of my users (which are not computer-savvy at all). Some examples of where this interferes: - saving attachments from within kmail - saving a copy of a pdf document from within okular (frequently done to re-save a pdf downloaded from the internet).
Unfortunately a recent updated to plasma 5.6.2 and related kf5 5.21 brings back the issue in Dolphin as well (which is at version 15.12.3 on my Fedora 23 installation). I already reported this in the Fedora bug mentioned in comment 1, but forgot to update here. I was able to narrow down the poor behaviour a bit more as well: - example simple directory hierarchy: nfs-share \ subdir \ sub-subdir so the nfs share "nfs-share" has one subdirectory called "subdirectory" and in that directory there's another subdirectory called "sub-subdirectory" - current user is "janssege" - user janssege is member of "goudsmid", though it's not his primary group - nfs-share is owned by goudsmid:goudsmid and has permissions rwxrwx--- => user can view contents of the share, but not contents of subdirectories on the share in Dolphin and friends Change permissions to rwxrwx--x => user can also view contents of subdirectories on the share The permissions on subdirectory will likewise define whether I can see the contents of sub-subdirectory. If the permissions of subdirectory are rwxrwx---, the contents of sub-subdirectory is empty, of they are rwxrwx--x, I can see the contents. Navigating back up from sub-subdirectory (when I can't see it's contents) will bring me back to subdirectory, but it will no longer have sub-subdirectory listed in its contents. That is restored by hitting F5. It also still stands that I can navigate to sub-subdirectory in all circumstances above from a konsole window or in nautilus and will always see its contents. And also when explicitly typing the address in dolphin's address bar, the suggestion dropdown properly suggests all subdirectories, regardless of the permissions. So it's apparently limited to the widget that should display the contents of the directory.
And I found a blog reporting this same issue on Arch linux: http://kdeblog.mageprojects.com/2016/06/24/plasma-5-6-clean-installation-impression/ So it doesn't appear to be distro specific.
I have resolved this issue by exporting directories outside of the /home directory on the server. It seems like there is some security feature interfering with exporting directories under /home. I never was able to figure out whether this is something in nfs or selinux or whatever. So works for me now.
I am reopening this bug as it happened to me again yesterday, exact same scenario as described in comment 4. It's probably a corner case, but it's a pretty annoying one that really offsets my less experienced users. The fact things work fine on the command line but not in dolphin suggests it's something in the way kde deals with network file system permissions.
Oh, I should have updated my version information: Dolphin is currently at dolphin-17.12.2-2.fc27.x86_64 KDE Frameworks at 5.48 Please let me know if you need additional details.