On 16/07/17 14:07, Carlos E. R. wrote:

The problem is that the router method is inflexible, you can not add to it support for some other protocol.

We know that this router accepts ext3 disks and xfs, which is a surprise: the router I tried accepted FAT and NTFS, the doc said.

Free is quite favoured amongst free software enthusiasts and the geek crowd, they're generally viewed as way more geek-friendly so support for such things isn't unusual. What's slightly peeving is that I'd read on some obscure support page for my previous router that the only common linux filesystem supported was xfs, so when I purchased and formatted this external disk I made the music partition xfs with a view to one day trying to set it up. Now I've just exchanged the router for an up-to-date version, and guess what - they now recommend ext4, and a warning prompt pops up about xfs saying various features aren't supported, although it still does basic read/write.

We know you can access via http.

Reading from the wikipedia.

The HD seems to be intended for recording TV programmes.

That's talking about the built-in HD on the "Freebox Revolution", currently the other choice of router available but an earlier generation to the one I have. The French wikipedia page provides a whole lot more useful and up-to-date detail including some charts.

Wikipedia says that the disk is made available "to Macintosh, Linux, and Windows computers", but it does not say which protocols it supports. My guess is that it will support samba, perhaps nfs. Gumb, you have to check that.

I toyed with nfs a few years ago and couldn't get anywhere with it, banging my head repeatedly against a brick wall. The support I got when I posed questions here or elsewhere suggested things which simply didn't work or were unavailable when I tried. A couple of years later I read one telling comment somewhere or other, maybe on an official update, saying that some of that core NFS functionality I'd been unable to get to work had effectively been broken for a long time, haha. The experience left me better inclined to strap my laptop to a rocket and fire it at the sun than start tinkering around with that again. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Am Sonntag, 16. Juli 2017, 15:20:36 CEST schrieb gumb:

On 16/07/17 14:07, Jan Ritzerfeld wrote:

...

Did you try to got to the "Network" location (left side bar) and then into the folder "Samba Shares"? Alternatively, you could just use "avahi-browse -r _smb._tcp" and "smbtree -b -N" on the command line to check whether your router offers any Samba share.

If I do that within Dolphin, I get the message:

"Unable to find any workgroups in your local network. This might be caused by an enabled firewall."

My router does NAT and has a built-in firewall, so I am not using the SuSEfirewall2 anymore. You could try stopping it until the next reboot as root by: systemctl stop SuSEfirewall2

I've never set up samba in any way before and was kind of hoping I'd never have to.

A samba client(!) hardly needs any setup.

Is that or NFS the only likely way, or could there be a more simple approach?

Since you want Clementine on two different computers to be able to read and write, I do not think there is a more simple solution than a network share. Gruß Jan -- Every man has the right to be wrong in his opinions, but no man has the right to be wrong in his facts. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 16/07/17 16:04, gumb wrote:

On 16/07/17 14:07, Jan Ritzerfeld wrote:

...

Did you try to got to the "Network" location (left side bar) and then into the folder "Samba Shares"? Alternatively, you could just use "avahi-browse -r _smb._tcp" and "smbtree -b -N" on the command line to check whether your router offers any Samba share.

Trying to paste the first of those commands into Konsole, it behaves weirdly, it activates the command after the -r and then pastes the remainder onto the next prompt, resulting in a cnf error. Maybe it's the wrapping - I tried typing it out manually with a space between the -r and the underscore, same cnf error.

The second command produces the following:

smbtree -b -N WORKGROUP \\FREEBOX Freebox Server

I just discovered some configuration options on the Freebox OS login for FTP, and also for Windows or Mac shares. The Windows shares tells me to browse to \\Freebox_Server. When I do that in Dolphin, it goes to smb://freebox_server/ and gives the message: Could not connect to host for smb://freebox_server/

Do I have to configure the firewall?

Sorry I'm answering to myself here as I'm working my way through this. I've just booted the second PC, which is running AV Linux. I don't believe there's any default firewall on there like with openSUSE. In Thunar file manager, I clicked on Browse Network and immediately saw 'Freebox Server'. When I click on that I can access under my username, 'WORKGROUP' and my password for the FreeboxOS. Now I need to figure out if all of this can actually be configured / used in useful way. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 16/07/17 18:57, Jan Ritzerfeld wrote:

Perfect, your freebox offers a samba share!

...

I just discovered some configuration options on the Freebox OS login for FTP, and also for Windows or Mac shares. The Windows shares tells me to browse to \\Freebox_Server. When I do that in Dolphin, it goes to smb://freebox_server/ and gives the message: Could not connect to host for smb://freebox_server/

Well, smbtree tells you that the name of the server is \\FREEBOX and, thus, the URL for Dolphin should be smb://freebox

...

Do I have to configure the firewall?

I don't use the SuSEfirewall2 anymore.

I just tried disabling the firewall, but something still blocks access to the samba share in Dolphin. Always the same error. Yet my other non-openSUSE Linux box connected fine straight away in Thunar. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Am Sonntag, 16. Juli 2017, 19:54:37 CEST schrieb gumb:

[...] I just tried disabling the firewall, but something still blocks access to the samba share in Dolphin.

Even if you enter smb://freebox in the address bar?

Always the same error. Yet my other non-openSUSE Linux box connected fine straight away in Thunar.

What happens if you try to open smb://{IP address of your Freebox} in Dolphin? Gruß Jan -- They never remember when I'm right and never forget when I'm wrong. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Am Sonntag, 16. Juli 2017, 22:24:34 CEST schrieb gumb:

On 16/07/17 22:18, Jan Ritzerfeld wrote:

...

Am Sonntag, 16. Juli 2017, 19:54:37 CEST schrieb gumb:

...

[...] I just tried disabling the firewall, but something still blocks access to the samba share in Dolphin.

Even if you enter smb://freebox in the address bar?

Yep, and even if I enter the string smb://freebox-server.local/ which is what shows in Thunar on the other machine.

So, there are two different names for your freebox server. The NetBIOS name "FREEBOX" and the mDNS host name "freebox-server".

...

...

Always the same error. Yet my other non-openSUSE Linux box connected fine straight away in Thunar.

What happens if you try to open smb://{IP address of your Freebox} in Dolphin? Aha, now we're getting somewhere. Yes that lists it straight away.

Using smb://freebox-server.local/ is the same as smb://{IP address of your Freebox} besides the mDNS host name resolution. Years ago, SuSEfirewall2 blocked the mDNS host name resolution: https://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security/2008-09/msg00011.html So, I assume that "ping freebox-server.local" doesn't work for you.

Seems a bit slow though, which is what I was warned of by the router's dialog when confirming it was an xfs partition. And yet the other box doesn't show these slowdowns, e.g. on directory listing.

Interesting point. Directory listing of samba shares seem to be somewhat slow here, too. Gruß Jan -- It's hard to detect good luck, it looks so much like something you've earned. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Am Montag, 17. Juli 2017, 00:59:01 CEST schrieb gumb:

Further examination of my files on the drive would suggest that it's the long filenames that have not been truncated but simply massacred and transformed into gobbledegook. I assume this is the tedious result of samba using Windows Joliet or some-such misery?

Most likely this is result of file / folder names containing one of the characters \ : * ? " < > | These characters are forbidden in Windows path names, and therefore samba reverts to auto generated 8.3 names. In case you have a lot of such file names, it might be worthwhile to investigate if the router also allows for publishing the disk as an nfs share. Accessing it via nfs would keep the file names intact. Just my €0.02 /Andreas -- Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 17/07/17 11:23, Jan Ritzerfeld wrote:

Am Montag, 17. Juli 2017, 00:59:01 CEST schrieb gumb:

...

On 16/07/17 23:59, Jan Ritzerfeld wrote: [...]

...

Using smb://freebox-server.local/ is the same as smb://{IP address of your Freebox} besides the mDNS host name resolution. Years ago, SuSEfirewall2 blocked the mDNS host name resolution: https://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security/2008-09/msg00011.html So, I assume that "ping freebox-server.local" doesn't work for you.

Your assumption is correct: ping: unknown host freebox-server.local

And after you stop the SuSEfirewall2? As root, e.g.: SuSEfirewall2 stop

Strange, I just stopped the firewall, got this: PING freebox-server.local (192.168.0.254) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 192.168.0.254: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.226 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.0.254: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.226 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.0.254: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.196 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.0.254: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.241 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.0.254: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=0.249 ms ^C --- freebox-server.local ping statistics --- 5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 4003ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.196/0.227/0.249/0.024 ms BUT ... I then re-enabled the firewall, got identical results. So that's not the issue.

Do you have the package nss-mdns installed? If you install avahi-utils, you will be able to test mDNS directly by: avahi-resolve -n freebox-server.local

nss-mdns is installed (in addition to the -32bit version). I installed avahi-utils. Running your above command I get: Failed to resolve host name 'freebox-server.local': Timeout reached I looked under the local network mode settings on the router. It gives this: Name of Freebox Server: Freebox Server DNS name: freebox-server mDNS name: Freebox-Server Netbios name: Freebox_Server

...

Further examination of my files on the drive would suggest that it's the long filenames that have not been truncated but simply massacred and transformed into gobbledegook. I assume this is the tedious result of samba using Windows Joliet or some-such misery?

Yes. It looks like your Freebox decided to do that. It is a samba server configuration that could be turned off, but AFAIK only on your Freebox itself.

Alas I don't see anywhere on the Freebox OS options to do that. I tried allowing FTP on the Freebox, with anonymous login. That works fine in Dolphin and I get fast directory listings. However, if I try opening files via FTP in, say, VLC Player, it spits out: ftp error: cannot set passive mode ftp error: cannot retrieve file core error: open of `ftp://mafreebox.freebox.fr/media/Music/Collection/{path to flac file} -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 19/07/17 13:04, Jan Ritzerfeld wrote:

...

...

...

...

Using smb://freebox-server.local/ is the same as smb://{IP address of your Freebox} besides the mDNS host name resolution. Years ago, SuSEfirewall2 blocked the mDNS host name resolution: https://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security/2008-09/msg00011.html So, I assume that "ping freebox-server.local" doesn't work for you.

Your assumption is correct: ping: unknown host freebox-server.local

And after you stop the SuSEfirewall2? As root, e.g.: SuSEfirewall2 stop

Strange, I just stopped the firewall, got this:

PING freebox-server.local (192.168.0.254) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 192.168.0.254: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.226 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.0.254: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.226 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.0.254: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.196 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.0.254: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.241 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.0.254: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=0.249 ms ^C --- freebox-server.local ping statistics --- 5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 4003ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.196/0.227/0.249/0.024 ms

BUT ... I then re-enabled the firewall, got identical results. So that's not the issue.

Well, I beg to differ: The nscd service caches positive host lookups for 600 seconds.

Ha, very clever. Just testing you ;) Indeed, this time I tried the other way around. It only worked the second time after I deactivated the firewall.

...

...

Do you have the package nss-mdns installed? If you install avahi-utils, you will be able to test mDNS directly by: avahi-resolve -n freebox-server.local

nss-mdns is installed (in addition to the -32bit version). I installed avahi-utils. Running your above command I get:

Failed to resolve host name 'freebox-server.local': Timeout reached

Even after you stopped the firewall? Because avahi-resolve won't use the nscd cache and will fail instantly in contrast to ping.

With the firewall stopped I get Freebox-Server.local 192.168.0.254

...

I looked under the local network mode settings on the router. It gives this:

Name of Freebox Server: Freebox Server DNS name: freebox-server mDNS name: Freebox-Server Netbios name: Freebox_Server

Interesting. Does ping freebox-server work? If so, you could try to type smb://freebox-server in Dolphin. That could work because routers often run their own DNS and offer a local domain for all DHCP clients. If so, there would be a line starting with "search" in /etc/resolv.conf.

No. I still get ping: unknown host freebox-server and Dolphin doesn't connect. In resolv.conf I see: # Generated by NetworkManager search free.fr my.domain.name nameserver 212.27.40.240 nameserver 212.27.40.241 ('My domain name' - hidden above merely to avoid more spam on an as yet untarnished account - is a real domain but not one that is actually tied in any way to my machine. It's hosted by my email provider in another country. I enter it during oS installation merely as a cosmetic thing instead of having whatever default it gives me.)

...

...

[...] Yes. It looks like your Freebox decided to do that. It is a samba server configuration that could be turned off, but AFAIK only on your Freebox itself. Alas I don't see anywhere on the Freebox OS options to do that.

To bad. Perhaps you could start a new thread and ask if anyone has an idea to mitigate the mangling. But I didn't find a solution using google...

...

I tried allowing FTP on the Freebox, with anonymous login. That works fine in Dolphin and I get fast directory listings. However, if I try opening files via FTP in, say, VLC Player, it spits out: ftp error: cannot set passive mode ftp error: cannot retrieve file core error: open of `ftp://mafreebox.freebox.fr/media/Music/Collection/{path to flac file}

Try stopping your firewall.

BTW, is mafreebox.freebox.fr the correct host name?

Even with the firewall stopped, VLC won't accept the FTP filedrop. I tried clicking the network links on the left pane in the player. The one for uPnP got the drive light flashing for a long while but I was only seeing errors in VLC Messages. Yes, that hostname is what was advised to use when I set FTP to enabled on the router. And I can browse using it in Dolphin. So I just pinged it: PING mafreebox.freebox.fr (???.???.???.???) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from freeplayer.freebox.fr (???.???.???.???): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.195 ms 64 bytes from freeplayer.freebox.fr (???.???.???.???): icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.249 ms 64 bytes from freeplayer.freebox.fr (???.???.???.???): icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.206 ms 64 bytes from freeplayer.freebox.fr (???.???.???.???): icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.238 ms 64 bytes from freeplayer.freebox.fr (???.???.???.???): icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=0.249 ms ^C --- mafreebox.freebox.fr ping statistics --- 5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 4000ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.195/0.227/0.249/0.026 ms Maybe I'm being over paranoid, but I don't know what the IP address relates to exactly, it's not my actual IP address, but I've hidden it here to avoid any malfeasance. Assuming I can get Clementine to accept the music library address being on a Samba share and it doesn't cause endless buffering as I've seen reported on numerous (old) bugs, I can accept using Samba there and doing file management via FTP (the latter being faster and avoiding the horrid 8:3 names). All of that works without configuring further the firewall, so I'm inclined to just leave it alone, but from the other things you've pointed out about mDNS and so on, I assume there's something amiss somewhere with the configuration? gumb -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 19/07/17 22:59, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

* gumb [07-19-17 13:14]: [...]

...

('My domain name' - hidden above merely to avoid more spam on an as yet untarnished account - is a real domain but not one that is actually tied in any way to my machine. It's hosted by my email provider in another country. I enter it during oS installation merely as a cosmetic thing instead of having whatever default it gives me.)

you waste your time, :^/ 82.235.15.244 if is available in every post you make.

but it is *your* time.

I'm not talking about either my regular IP address or the email used for posting on this ML, which I'm aware appear in the headers, and the latter of which gets sometimes reposted (rather unfortunately) in the body by mail clients like your own. Rather, I'm 'hiding' the other domain from the *body* of my reply. What goes in the headers and in the body can have a substantially different impact with regard to spam returns. These mailing lists get published and archived in various places across the web, but for the most part, only the text body and basic sender info, not the full headers, gets printed. Many bots trawl and harvest webpages but not necessarily the header content of mail on a list. Sure, that happens too, but proportionately much less so from my observations. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Am Mittwoch, 19. Juli 2017, 19:12:46 CEST schrieb gumb:

On 19/07/17 13:04, Jan Ritzerfeld wrote: [...]

...

Well, I beg to differ: The nscd service caches positive host lookups for 600 seconds.

Ha, very clever. Just testing you ;)

:)

Indeed, this time I tried the other way around. It only worked the second time after I deactivated the firewall.

Okay. Looks like the SuSEfirewall2 still breaks mDNS and, thus, it works on the other machine.

...

...

Failed to resolve host name 'freebox-server.local': Timeout reached

Even after you stopped the firewall? Because avahi-resolve won't use the nscd cache and will fail instantly in contrast to ping.

With the firewall stopped I get Freebox-Server.local 192.168.0.254

Fine. So, some of your problems are explained by an active SuSEfirewall2.

[...] No. I still get ping: unknown host freebox-server and Dolphin doesn't connect.

In resolv.conf I see:

# Generated by NetworkManager search free.fr my.domain.name nameserver 212.27.40.240 nameserver 212.27.40.241

Like Carlos, I would have expected only one nameserver: 192.168.0.254, i.e., your router. Did you enter the name servers of your provider manually in NetworkManager or does your router announce these?

nmcli conn show --active NAME UUID TYPE DEVICE MyWifi 12345678-9012-3456-789abcdef01234567 802-11-wireless wlan0 nmcli conn show MyWifi | grep ipv4\.method ipv4.method: auto ipv4.dns: ipv4.dns-search: ipv4.addresses: ipv4.gateway: -- ipv4.routes: ipv4.route-metric: -1 ipv4.ignore-auto-routes: no ipv4.ignore-auto-dns: no ipv4.dhcp-client-id: -- ipv4.dhcp-send-hostname: yes ipv4.dhcp-hostname: -- ipv4.never-default: no ipv4.may-fail: yes

('My domain name' - hidden above merely to avoid more spam on an as yet untarnished account - is a real domain but not one that is actually tied in any way to my machine. It's hosted by my email provider in another country. I enter it during oS installation merely as a cosmetic thing instead of having whatever default it gives me.)

Okay. However, I don't think that its presence in your resolve.conf is necessary.

[...] Yes, that hostname is what was advised to use when I set FTP to enabled on the router. And I can browse using it in Dolphin. So I just pinged it: [...] Maybe I'm being over paranoid, but I don't know what the IP address relates to exactly, it's not my actual IP address, but I've hidden it here to avoid any malfeasance.

mafreebox.free.fr seems to resolve to a special IP address (212.27.38.253) to that all FreeBoxes will respond to if the request comes from the internal network. Since this is not a very common situation, external IP but actually internal, you could try to use freebox-server.local as a host name for FTP after stopping your SuSEfirewall2.

Assuming I can get Clementine to accept the music library address being on a Samba share and it doesn't cause endless buffering as I've seen reported on numerous (old) bugs, I can accept using Samba there

I started using SMB even for my Linux boxes when macOS moved to SMB since I didn't want to configure three different protocols anymore (NFS, AFP, and SMB). And the speed of SMB is good enough for me: 9-10 MB/s over WiFi.

and doing file management via FTP (the latter being faster and avoiding the horrid 8:3 names). All of that works without configuring further the firewall, so I'm inclined to just leave it alone, but from the other things you've pointed out about mDNS and so on, I assume there's something amiss somewhere with the configuration?

Well, mDNS works independently of a server or router. Thus, if you replace your router by a new one, you don't have to reconfigure any IP address or host name (in case it was resolved your router). Furthermore, DNS-SD with mDNS can find services (ftp, ssh, samba, webdav, sftp, ssh, www,...) in your network without the need for registering them at a central server, i.e., again it works independently of a server or router. This is the avahi-browse command for: "avahi-browse --all" lists all services (including their IP address) in your network that are announced by each client individually. Thus, applications, e.g. Dolphin, could find them automatically. Gruß Jan -- The most useful program will be continually improved until it is useless. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Am Samstag, 22. Juli 2017, 00:17:11 CEST schrieb gumb:

[...] Now, on plugging the drive into the router, the drive access light is permanently flashing every couple of seconds, which it never did before. If I touch the drive I can feel that every few seconds there is some clunking, though not audible. It seems to be in a seek loop. Plugged it directly into my PCs and same thing happens once mounted. Mounting the first partition on its own is fine. Tried deleting and reformatting the second partition with GParted on the other PC, and even with no data copied over, as soon as I mount it I get the same seek issues. [...]

Such disk activity is often caused by the "lazy_itable_init" feature of mkfs.ext4. It is enabled by default, so that "the inode table will not be fully initialized by mke2fs. This speeds up filesystem initialization noticeably, but it requires the kernel to finish initializing the filesystem in the background when the filesystem is first mounted." If you leave your new ext4 partition mounted for several hours (maybe 3-4) the disk activity should go away. Gruß Jan -- If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Am Samstag, 22. Juli 2017, 11:36:38 CEST schrieb gumb:

On 22/07/17 11:16, Jan Ritzerfeld wrote:

...

Am Samstag, 22. Juli 2017, 00:17:11 CEST schrieb gumb: [...] Such disk activity is often caused by the "lazy_itable_init" feature of mkfs.ext4. It is enabled by default, so that "the inode table will not be fully initialized by mke2fs. This speeds up filesystem initialization noticeably, but it requires the kernel to finish initializing the filesystem in the background when the filesystem is first mounted." If you leave your new ext4 partition mounted for several hours (maybe 3-4) the disk activity should go away.

Hmm, interesting, if a bit above my head. Is this initialization something retained on the drive itself or something that the kernel of each device it attaches to has to complete? In other words, is it a process that can be achieved across several mounts on different machines? Because it seemed to have had plenty of time previously.

AFAIK, the lazy initialization is suspended on un-mounted and should be resumed when mounting again. But it has to re-done completely after formatting the partition. Furthermore, it might take much longer when the drive is connected via USB. Or if the hard disk parks its heads or even spins down to save power and has to un-park them or spin up each time the kernel initializes parts of the inode table. This might explain the noise you've heard. Often, you can verify that by watching the raw value of Load_Cycle_Count smart attribute.

Oddly, though typically, having just started another whole thread about this, I just clicked on the empty partition directory and there was no more flashing of the activity light, just permanently on as it should be. I'm in the process of copying the music over once again and will see what happens after plugging it back into the router.

Many, many years ago I owned a Hitachi "Deathstar". You should be really worried if your hard drive makes such noise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSL50bvjLT4 Gruß Jan -- The probability of being watched is proportional to the stupidity of your actions. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Am Sonntag, 23. Juli 2017, 00:21:16 CEST schrieb gumb:

[...] Seems you were right. I've marked the other thread as resolved. It appeared to just require more time. After copying the music over all was fine, no more flashing. I plugged the drive into the router and it's back to normal. Thanks for the useful info. I'll follow up on a couple of the other issues from earlier posts but it seems that I have everything set up in a way that works well now.

...which means the next catastrophe is already overdue :-/

Actually, there wasn't any catastrophe! :) Now, you can play your music from any computer in your network. And your files are still okay despite of the samba mangling. And your hard disk looks fine.

[...] I'd probably resort to the same action taken in that video!

My DeathStar started dying right after I gave it an extra fan to minimize the risk of failing. Grrr. Well, I used the replacement DeathStar for backups.

The one in the laptop I used for studying anger management issues made some ghastly noises like a record stylus scratching across the disc, but luckily only a very small couple of bits of the drive were damaged. After repartitioning it was good as new. Well, sort of. A victim of domestic abuse. I'm not proud.

:-D Gruß Jan -- The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Am Samstag, 22. Juli 2017, 14:51:44 CEST schrieb Carlos E. R.:

On 2017-07-22 11:16, Jan Ritzerfeld wrote: [...] Maybe full initialization can be forced at format time? [...]

Yes, it can. Sorry not to mention. Since gumb already formatted it twice and copied 150 GB of data to the partition, I thought it would mean less hassle to wait a couple of hours.

I don't like this feature.

At least, it never caused problems for me. :) Gruß Jan -- The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body. This means that only left handed people are in their right mind. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 20/07/17 19:58, Jan Ritzerfeld wrote:

Am Mittwoch, 19. Juli 2017, 19:12:46 CEST schrieb gumb:

...

[...] No. I still get ping: unknown host freebox-server and Dolphin doesn't connect.

In resolv.conf I see:

# Generated by NetworkManager search free.fr my.domain.name nameserver 212.27.40.240 nameserver 212.27.40.241

Like Carlos, I would have expected only one nameserver: 192.168.0.254, i.e., your router. Did you enter the name servers of your provider manually in NetworkManager or does your router announce these?

...

nmcli conn show --active NAME UUID TYPE DEVICE MyWifi 12345678-9012-3456-789abcdef01234567 802-11-wireless wlan0 nmcli conn show MyWifi | grep ipv4\.method ipv4.method: auto ipv4.dns: ipv4.dns-search: ipv4.addresses: ipv4.gateway: -- ipv4.routes: ipv4.route-metric: -1 ipv4.ignore-auto-routes: no ipv4.ignore-auto-dns: no ipv4.dhcp-client-id: -- ipv4.dhcp-send-hostname: yes ipv4.dhcp-hostname: -- ipv4.never-default: no ipv4.may-fail: yes

I configured a static address in NM settings, with the two nameservers listed as advised by the ISP. I can't figure out how to run the second of those nmcli commands you post above since my network name contains spaces and brackets and the command stumbles.

...

('My domain name' - hidden above merely to avoid more spam on an as yet untarnished account - is a real domain but not one that is actually tied in any way to my machine. It's hosted by my email provider in another country. I enter it during oS installation merely as a cosmetic thing instead of having whatever default it gives me.)

Okay. However, I don't think that its presence in your resolve.conf is necessary.

I probably confused the issue previously. The 'My domain name' I'm referring to above is my machine domain name, which I presume is added automatically to the resolv.conf file since the only one I've entered in NM configuration is 'free.fr' What I was getting at was that this domain I give my machine(s), whilst being a real domain I own, is not actually associated to my French ISP or any other service running on my machine.

...

[...] Yes, that hostname is what was advised to use when I set FTP to enabled on the router. And I can browse using it in Dolphin. So I just pinged it: [...] Maybe I'm being over paranoid, but I don't know what the IP address relates to exactly, it's not my actual IP address, but I've hidden it here to avoid any malfeasance.

mafreebox.free.fr seems to resolve to a special IP address (212.27.38.253) to that all FreeBoxes will respond to if the request comes from the internal network. Since this is not a very common situation, external IP but actually internal, you could try to use freebox-server.local as a host name for FTP after stopping your SuSEfirewall2.

Yes that's the IP address I was seeing and couldn't understand if it was some additional IP held by my router or something else. If it's a shared public address it's okay. I assume that by selecting anonymous login for both FTP and Samba this doesn't pose any threat. Allowing remote FTP access is a different thing which I haven't activated.

...

Assuming I can get Clementine to accept the music library address being on a Samba share and it doesn't cause endless buffering as I've seen reported on numerous (old) bugs, I can accept using Samba there

I started using SMB even for my Linux boxes when macOS moved to SMB since I didn't want to configure three different protocols anymore (NFS, AFP, and SMB). And the speed of SMB is good enough for me: 9-10 MB/s over WiFi.

I've just run into an issue. The second PC on the LAN, running AV Linux and xfce, now has Clementine reading the music off the external drive via Samba. In fact, I had to create a shortcut in Thunar in order to find a way to force Clementine's library configuration file picker dialog to browse to smb://192.168.0.254/media/ It then automatically converts that into: [LibraryConfig] last_path="/run/user/1001/gvfs/smb-share:server=192.168.0.254,share=media" But trying to play a track after booting up fails. I first have to open Thunar and click the shortcut to the samba share. It produces a login dialog. I've selected 'anonymous' with no password (as configured on the router), and remember 'Forever'. Then Clementine finds the music. But after a reboot it's always the same. It doesn't remember it forever. I don't know if this is a Thunar/xfce issue. I don't think I need anything like gnome-keyring or GNOME services launching on startup just to remember an empty password. Is there a system-level configuration for logging in anonymously to a samba share at start-up? And one that would fail silently if I have the drive unplugged or I add the same configuration to my laptop? As for adding the external drive to my fstab via smb://192.168.0.254, aside from being not quite sure how to configure that line, I'm not sure I want it. My main machine is a laptop with docking station. When I take the laptop elsewhere it would necessitate having the fstab line set to noauto, but then that seems to invalidate any worth of having it in the fstab. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Am Sonntag, 23. Juli 2017, 18:08:07 CEST schrieb gumb:

...

Am Mittwoch, 19. Juli 2017, 19:12:46 CEST schrieb gumb: [...]

...

nmcli conn show --active

NAME UUID TYPE DEVICE MyWifi 12345678-9012-3456-789abcdef01234567 802-11-wireless wlan0

...

nmcli conn show MyWifi | grep ipv4\.method [...] I configured a static address in NM settings, with the two nameservers

On 20/07/17 19:58, Jan Ritzerfeld wrote: listed as advised by the ISP.

Okay. Then you won't be able to use the "short" host name freebox-server for your FreeBox even if your FreeBox offers its own DNS. You could test this by creating a second NM connection for your FreeBox that uses automatic IPv4 configuration.

I can't figure out how to run the second of those nmcli commands you post above since my network name contains spaces and brackets and the command stumbles.

You could use the UUID instead of the name.

[...]

...

Okay. However, I don't think that its presence in your resolve.conf is necessary.

I probably confused the issue previously. The 'My domain name' I'm referring to above is my machine domain name, which I presume is added automatically to the resolv.conf file since the only one I've entered in NM configuration is 'free.fr'

Hmm. I never enter a host name during OS installation but change it later to a local name, i.e., without any '.'. Via DHCP my computer sends it name to the router and the router sends back its local domain (amongst other things):

cat /etc/HOSTNAME karl hostname -f karl.fritz.box grep search /etc/resolv.conf search fritz.box host karl karl.fritz.box has address 192.... karl.fritz.box has IPv6 address 2a0a:... host diskstation diskstation.fritz.box has address 192.... diskstation.fritz.box has IPv6 address 2a0a:...

Because of the search line in resolv.conf I don't need to specify the full host name. And the DNS of my router resolves other host names of my local network.

What I was getting at was that this domain I give my machine(s), whilst being a real domain I own, is not actually associated to my French ISP or any other service running on my machine.

Yes, and this is why I think it is not necessary to have it in your resolv.conf. And I doubt that free.fr is that useful, too. Okay, you could "ping www" instead "www.free.fr".

[...]

...

mafreebox.free.fr seems to resolve to a special IP address (212.27.38.253) to that all FreeBoxes will respond to if the request comes from the internal network. Since this is not a very common situation, external IP but actually internal, you could try to use freebox-server.local as a host name for FTP after stopping your SuSEfirewall2.

Yes that's the IP address I was seeing and couldn't understand if it was some additional IP held by my router or something else. If it's a shared public address it's okay.

That confused me too. But this way you can access your FreeBox without using DHCP and a local DNS.

I assume that by selecting anonymous login for both FTP and Samba this doesn't pose any threat. Allowing remote FTP access is a different thing which I haven't activated.

Correct, in general you shouldn't allow remote access to any service when selecting anonymous login.

[...] I've just run into an issue. [...] I don't think I need anything like gnome-keyring or GNOME services launching on startup just to remember an empty password.

Sorry, no idea, I don't use GNOME.

Is there a system-level configuration for logging in anonymously to a samba share at start-up? And one that would fail silently if I have the drive unplugged or I add the same configuration to my laptop?

Maybe, see below.

As for adding the external drive to my fstab via smb://192.168.0.254, aside from being not quite sure how to configure that line,

Never did this but, if AV Linux uses systemd, I assume something like that (in one line): //192.168.0.254/media /{existing path where to mount} guest,noauto,x- systemd.automount,x-systemd.idle-timeout=60,nofail 0 0 I added the "guest" option to mount it without asking for a password (man mount.cifs). The other options are explained in "man systemd.mount".

I'm not sure I want it. My main machine is a laptop with docking station. When I take the laptop elsewhere it would necessitate having the fstab line set to noauto, but then that seems to invalidate any worth of having it in the fstab.

Exactly, but systemd can mount your share only when needed and will automatically unmount it if you don't use it anymore by the following fstab options: noauto,x-systemd.automount,x-systemd.idle-timeout=60,nofail However, if AV Linux does not use systemd or you don't want to edit your fstab, use the old autofs/automount. Install autofs and add at the end of /etc/auto.master: /{existing base path for all mounts} /etc/auto.cifs --timeout 60 Then, create /etc/auto.cifs with the following content: media -fstype=cifs,guest ://192.168.0.254/media "/etc/init.d/autofs reload" and you should be able to browse to /{existing base path for all mounts}/media Gruß Jan -- Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 30/07/17 13:31, gumb wrote:

On 23/07/17 20:02, Jan Ritzerfeld wrote:

...

Am Sonntag, 23. Juli 2017, 18:08:07 CEST schrieb gumb:

...

Is there a system-level configuration for logging in anonymously to a samba share at start-up? And one that would fail silently if I have the drive unplugged or I add the same configuration to my laptop?

Maybe, see below.

...

As for adding the external drive to my fstab via smb://192.168.0.254, aside from being not quite sure how to configure that line,

Never did this but, if AV Linux uses systemd, I assume something like that (in one line): //192.168.0.254/media /{existing path where to mount} guest,noauto,x- systemd.automount,x-systemd.idle-timeout=60,nofail 0 0

I added the "guest" option to mount it without asking for a password (man mount.cifs). The other options are explained in "man systemd.mount".

...

I'm not sure I want it. My main machine is a laptop with docking station. When I take the laptop elsewhere it would necessitate having the fstab line set to noauto, but then that seems to invalidate any worth of having it in the fstab.

Exactly, but systemd can mount your share only when needed and will automatically unmount it if you don't use it anymore by the following fstab options: noauto,x-systemd.automount,x-systemd.idle-timeout=60,nofail

However, if AV Linux does not use systemd or you don't want to edit your fstab, use the old autofs/automount. Install autofs and add at the end of /etc/auto.master: /{existing base path for all mounts} /etc/auto.cifs --timeout 60

Then, create /etc/auto.cifs with the following content: media -fstype=cifs,guest ://192.168.0.254/media

"/etc/init.d/autofs reload" and you should be able to browse to /{existing base path for all mounts}/media

I had to put all this aside for a while, but have run up against other issues since my last posts. Having never attached any storage to a network previously, I'd never even given a moment's thought to how it would work regarding file ownership and permissions.

I believe I last copied the music collection onto the drive via FTP. I hit a snag when I tried to save a playlist in Clementine by overwriting one already existing in the Playlists folder on the network drive. Though there was no error message, I could see in the file manager that the file wasn't being modified. After playing around a bit I found I could save it in the root directory of the attached drive but not in the music collection folder. Initial examinations weren't aided by Thunar merely showing all ownership as being 'root', which when examined later on my openSUSE box proved to be incorrect. The files and directories created by the router have user and group ownership of 'freebox', and UID/GID of 4242. However, the music collection that I copied over with FTP has ownership by my regular username and UID of 1001 (common on both connected PCs).

I feel like I'm opening up a whole new can of worms with this. I've tried reading wiki pages on CIFS and I still haven't the froggiest what's what with that and Samba, etc. It's all new to me. I tried adding the drive to the fstab using a modified version of the line advised above, in this case:

//192.168.0.254/media /home/media ext4 noatime,guest,user,noauto,x-systemd.automount,x-systemd.idle-timeout=60,nofail 0 0

I don't know if any of those options are contradictory or extraneous. In any case, a new device appears in the Dolphin Places panel: media on 192.168.0.254 but when I click on it, nothing happens. The drive doesn't seek or respond. No error message, nothing. I added a different line on the other machine as I'm not sure about its systemd status: //192.168.0.254/media /home/media ext4 noatime,guest,user,noauto,nofail,_netdev 0 0

Again, I couldn't access it. I had to use the smb/ftp entries I'd previously created in Thunar.

Amongst my web searches I stumbled upon this random page: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MountWindowsSharesPermanently I see there it shows an fstab line where 'ext4' is replaced by 'cifs'. Is this what is considered the 'old' (pre-systemd) way of doing things, related to the autofs method mentioned above? I'm rather reluctant to do anything by an 'old' method even if it still works, just for sake of not having to relearn in future as I continually upgrade and replace machines and those old methods become redundant. That page also mentions other things like the addition of uid=1001 to the fstab line, but I don't know if that's what I should be trying to do.

Should I be attempting to leave the 'freebox' ownership and permissions of all files as they are and always log in anonymously as a guest, or should I be trying to set it up so that everything has my ownership and ID? I'd have thought the latter, bearing in mind I will sometimes unplug the drive to take it with the laptop elsewhere, and so perhaps I should forget anonymous login and set my regular PC login username and password here? http://paste.opensuse.org/6604f82a However, the freebox will likely insist upon its own ownership for folders relating to other integrated functions like the TV recording and downloads. Perhaps the two methods can coexist.

Just to throw a spanner in the works, it looks like I've got to zap the partition and start all over again. All my fault. Last weekend whilst exploring all the freebox's options, I configured a folder for recording TV programmes and thought I'd set a test recording of something on later in the week. Thursday night I came in from work, tired, saw the hard drive light flashing continuously, the drive spinning round and feeling a bit hot, and panicked, completely forgetting I'd set that programme to record. I couldn't find any way to unmount or disengage the drive from the FreeboxOS or the router's front panel, it said some process was using the drive and I couldn't trace what. After twenty minutes of worrying my drive was soon going to be worn out I pulled the plug. Five seconds later, I remembered about the TV programme :(

Result: the router now complains about the drive being unavailable. All verifications of the partition fail. I've looked at it plugged in directly to the PC, checked all hidden files, erased the two relating to the half-recorded programme, confirmed there's absolutely nothing else on there. But still it doesn't want to know any more. I've restarted the router in safe mode, done everything I can. Something's irreversibly corrupted, even though all the files are intact. Will have to reformat the partition, for the fourth time. But before I copy everything over again, I should figure out the implications of file ownership.

gumb

Reading your posts one thing strikes me, is what exactly does your router/that box actually do? in particular does Freebox OS support Unix/Linux file permisssions or does it not ? Does it mount drives properly or not ? etc etc. What it seems to me is that you need to put the problems raised here to whatever support system is available for that device. If it was me I'd first fix the permissions for whatever files you have on the HDD, and make sure that it/they work on at least one Linux box, ignoring the router for now which seems to me to be the source of your problems. At least until you can find out what it is designed to do. M -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 2017-07-30 14:31, gumb wrote:

On 23/07/17 20:02, Jan Ritzerfeld wrote:

...

Am Sonntag, 23. Juli 2017, 18:08:07 CEST schrieb gumb:

I had to put all this aside for a while, but have run up against other issues since my last posts. Having never attached any storage to a network previously, I'd never even given a moment's thought to how it would work regarding file ownership and permissions.

Yes, ownership is handled differently depending on how you access the remote media. With some services it is the service which decides the permissions and ownership, with others it is the client which sets them. For example, with NFS, the permissions are fully Linux type and decided at the client, typically as the user you run as in the client, but by number, not by name. With FTP, it depends how it is set up. As you login as some user to the FTP, then the files can be owned by that user, or by a common user for all. The FTP users can be system users or virtual users. With Samba, it tries to emulate Windows permissions, set at the server. There can be tables matching Windows users to Linux users. You might periodically run a script on the server to change the ownerships and permissions to those you like. For reading, there are protocols designed for reading files quickly my media players. I forgot the name now, but very possibly your router supports it. Ah, DLNA.

Just to throw a spanner in the works, it looks like I've got to zap the partition and start all over again. All my fault. Last weekend whilst exploring all the freebox's options, I configured a folder for recording TV programmes and thought I'd set a test recording of something on later in the week. Thursday night I came in from work, tired, saw the hard drive light flashing continuously, the drive spinning round and feeling a bit hot, and panicked, completely forgetting I'd set that programme to record. I couldn't find any way to unmount or disengage the drive from the FreeboxOS or the router's front panel, it said some process was using the drive and I couldn't trace what. After twenty minutes of worrying my drive was soon going to be worn out I pulled the plug. Five seconds later, I remembered about the TV programme :(

Result: the router now complains about the drive being unavailable. All verifications of the partition fail. I've looked at it plugged in directly to the PC, checked all hidden files, erased the two relating to the half-recorded programme, confirmed there's absolutely nothing else on there. But still it doesn't want to know any more. I've restarted the router in safe mode, done everything I can. Something's irreversibly corrupted, even though all the files are intact. Will have to reformat the partition, for the fourth time. But before I copy everything over again, I should figure out the implications of file ownership.

Maybe you have to locate a forum avenue for that router and ask there? -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 42.2 x86_64 "Malachite" at Telcontar)

On 30/07/17 18:00, gumb wrote:

On 30/07/17 16:15, Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

Yes, ownership is handled differently depending on how you access the remote media. With some services it is the service which decides the permissions and ownership, with others it is the client which sets them.

For example, with NFS, the permissions are fully Linux type and decided at the client, typically as the user you run as in the client, but by number, not by name.

There's no mention of NFS on this router's config options, unfortunately, at least nothing obvious. I don't know whether that means it's completely impossible to set up though. I'm sure in many ways it would be preferable to Samba.

...

With FTP, it depends how it is set up. As you login as some user to the FTP, then the files can be owned by that user, or by a common user for all. The FTP users can be system users or virtual users.

On the router's FTP config, there is the option of anonymous login, but if you don't select that, it says you must use the username 'freebox'.

...

With Samba, it tries to emulate Windows permissions, set at the server. There can be tables matching Windows users to Linux users.

You might periodically run a script on the server to change the ownerships and permissions to those you like.

For reading, there are protocols designed for reading files quickly my media players. I forgot the name now, but very possibly your router supports it. Ah, DLNA.

I'll have to look at that later. I know my five-year-old Symbian phone supports DLNA! I have a feeling that may be something integrated with the second box that I don't use.

The second Freebox, the 'Player', is a miniature thing that runs on Android and handles all the more media-oriented functionality, the TV and whatnot. However, the first box, the 'Server', can also handle attached storage and it's somehow even possible to record TV-via-Internet using the router alone, which is something interesting I hadn't expected.

...

Maybe you have to locate a forum avenue for that router and ask there?

Like I mentioned in my response to Michael Norman, I have just discovered some support forums and newsgroups for the French ISP. Honestly, when you go through their support pages they were so obscurely linked and difficult to find I didn't expect to find anybody else there, more likely just somebody stuck from 2008 still trying to get out :)

But I've now subscribed to the most relevant of those newsgroups for future questions and answers.

gumb

Pretty much most of what you want to do as I understand what you have said depends on what your Router will or will not do. AFAIK nfs and ftp configuration is well documented in OpenSuse even for the likes of me. M -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Jan Ritzerfeld schreef op 30-07-2017 18:24:

Sadly, samba seems to work that way. Samba mounts are generally single-user and all files and directories will have the same owner and permission locally, regardless of the actual owner and permissions defined by the underlying file system. Nonetheless, even if you have local permissions to access any of them, the actual ownership and permissions kick in and then, additionally, the the samba server share definitions. So, you need local permissions to access /home/media. These are the "uid" and "gid" fstab options for. Assuming your username is gump, you can add "uid=gumb" and "gid=users" as fstab options (if in doubt, "id" in a terminal will tell you both). Then, you will see all files as if they were owned by you and you should have access to them as long as the underlying file system or the samba server don't deny it.

Just going to chime in: the Unix Extensions do allow you to see the files as they are on the server, while the files you create will still use your login name (account) on the server to give them a username and group. So by default what you say here is correct, but you CAN have the server IDs shine through. On Linux you can. If you then ensure that those IDs are available on your system, they can make sense. For instance on the Synology you can run a Directory Server (LDAP) and create users within that Directory Server. Those users can then be used (on the Synology) to log into Samba using a "workgroup" name as defined in LDAP (the "dc" top level container name) --- So for example I have changed my "dc" to "ds" and in the Synology itself those users show up as "user@ds". (DC stands for domain component, happens to be in this case the hierarchy the LDAP users/groups are grouped under). So if you are in SSH on your synology and you do "ls" or "vdir" with names then the names will show up as "user@ds" as owner of those files. They will have higher IDs than regular users. At that point you can register your Linux box with the same LDAP server, ensuring that timeouts are low and negative timeouts for the caching daemon you use are high, and your local system will ALSO look up the same ownerships and display the same names. So that is one way of having shared users. There is or used to be a bug in the linux kernel where local permissions did not always get used appropriately such that if you were in the local group of the remote file as seen on the local system, you might be denied by the local cifs.ko module access to said file even though the server would grant it. One way around that is the "noperm" option that will just grant local access to everyone on the local system and let the server handle everything with just the logged in account name. Or I myself developed a small patch that would introduce "nogperm" that would allow all users in the required group locally all access and let the server handle it from then on, but I never published it. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Thanks for this useful and detailed response. I need to get a couple of long days' work out the way so I can come back to this and absorb it fully. I feel like I might finally just get my head around some of these Samba basics, although then I read Xen's advanced continuation of the thread and want to go running back to the hills :) On 30/07/17 18:24, Jan Ritzerfeld wrote:

Searching these French support forums isn't that easy for me...

Don't worry I wouldn't expect you to go to such lengths! gumb -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 2017-08-03 19:12, gumb wrote:

On 30/07/17 18:24, Jan Ritzerfeld wrote:

Ok, the storm currently passing over seems to have enlivened my head and I'm looking at this again. Before I go reformatting the problematic partition, I'm trying to modify the fstab line and mount it again whilst plugged into the router. I've initially set it like this, as per the above advice:

//192.168.0.254/media /home/media cifs noauto,guest,uid=gumb,gid=users,x-systemd.automount,x-systemd.idle-timeout=60,nofail 0 0

Trying to mount in Dolphin I get the following error: An error occurred while accessing 'Home', the system responded: mount: only root can mount //192.168.0.254/media on /home/media

Add "user" to the list of options. Or possibly "users". They are slightly different options, the second one might be better for you.

So to put that to the test, trying the same in Dolphin in Super User mode: An error occurred while accessing 'Root', the system responded: Couldn't chdir to /home/media: No such device

The directory "/home/media" has to exist in advance, preferably empty.

I tried adding 'user' to the fstab options. Under my regular user I then get: An error occurred while accessing 'Home', the system responded: This program is not installed setuid root - "user" CIFS mounts not supported.

Ah, yes, a modification/bug. You can not mount CIFS mounts as user unless you make certain binary suid.

And as root: An error occurred while accessing 'Root', the system responded: Couldn't chdir to /home/media: No such device

See above.

Actually, all this is a bit curious as the very first time, the message I got in Dolphin was subtly different: An error occurred while accessing 'media on 192.168.0.254', the system responded: mount: only root can mount //192.168.0.254/media on /home/media

Anyway, I checked the ownership of /home/media and it was set as root:root,

Oh, scrap the above. The directory exists. The error about "no such device" should then refer to "//192.168.0.254/media". The "device". Anyway, the presence of "x-systemd.automount" means it should automatically mount but fails for some reason. The system log should have entries about that.

although I know for sure I changed this to gumb:users a couple of weeks ago. So I tried changing it again. It refuses if I tick 'Apply changes to all subfolders and their contents', but without that option it does what it's told.

The permissions of the mount directory doesn't matter while the device is not mounted.

I then removed 'user' again from the fstab line. Still got the error messages in Dolphin.

Seeing that the FTP link I'd previously created in Dolphin - to ftp://mafreebox.freebox.fr/media/ - worked fine, I tried simply changing it to smb://mafreebox.freebox.fr/media/ and it connects no problem. I'm fairly sure I tried that earlier in this long quest and that was never the case before.

According to Dolphin browsing smb://, all directories on the remote drive now have my user and group ownership, but it seems that's just a mask that comes about as a result of forcing it on the fstab line.

Yes. Or by dolphin. The thing is, if I'm not mistaken, by using samba, or cifs, the disk is accessed with Windows type permissions. Ie, it things it is a FAT disk, or NTFS disks, which doesn't support linux type "user" UIDS.

Even the lost+found folder shows as such, yet when I try to browse there, a dialog prompts me for login credentials, so I assume that is still owned by root, regardless of what Dolphin says.

Trying to find out how to list the samba share files and directories on the command line, and stumbling across info that's either out-of-date or not relevant to current openSUSE, I landed at http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/SMB-HOWTO-8.html where I found out about this command:

~> /usr/bin/smbclient -L 192.168.0.254 Domain=[WORKGROUP] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 3.0.37]

Sharename Type Comment --------- ---- ------- Volume 751Go Disk AutoShare of fbxhdiskd partition 1001 media Disk AutoShare of fbxhdiskd partition 1002 IPC$ IPC IPC Service (Freebox Server) Domain=[WORKGROUP] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 3.0.37]

Server Comment --------- ------- FREEBOX_SERVER Freebox Server

Workgroup Master --------- ------- WORKGROUP FREEBOX_SERVER

Does that prove that the underlying OS on the Freebox is Linux?

Yep.

From there I've figured out to do: ~> smbclient \\\\192.168.0.254\\media {my password} I had hoped to see the real ownership of files but neither the ls nor the dir command gives me that. Perhaps I'm barking up the wrong tree - I suppose file ownership on a Samba share will not resemble Unix norms?

No, they will not. Samba is a Windows protocol. Ie, it is a Linux emulation of a Windows protocol, so it can not transmit on the wire Linux permissions/ownerships. On the server there is probably a table of which windows users correspond to the local (to the server) Linux users. There is a command to create (in the server) the "windows" users and passwords: pdbedit Also: /etc/samba/smbusers: # This file allows you to map usernames from the clients to the server. # Unix_name = SMB_name1 SMB_name2 ... root = administrator -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 42.2 x86_64 "Malachite" at Telcontar)

Patrick, et al -- ...and then Patrick Shanahan said... % ... % fstab: % //192.168.1.14/C-Share/ /home/paka/cifs cifs credentials=/root/.smbcredentials,guest,nofail,_netdev,iocharset=utf8,sec=ntlm,uid=1000,gid=100,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777 0 0 % ... % and as you can see, the mount point is "~/paka/cifs" [snip] Is that perhaps ~paka instead of really ~/paka as shown? Or am I missing some interesting samba mapping magic? HTH & TIA & HAND :-D -- David T-G See http://justpickone.org/davidtg/email/ See http://justpickone.org/davidtg/tofu.txt -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 2017-08-04 13:54, David T-G wrote:

Patrick, et al --

...and then Patrick Shanahan said... % ... % fstab: % //192.168.1.14/C-Share/ /home/paka/cifs cifs credentials=/root/.smbcredentials,guest,nofail,_netdev,iocharset=utf8,sec=ntlm,uid=1000,gid=100,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777 0 0 % ... % and as you can see, the mount point is "~/paka/cifs" [snip]

Is that perhaps

~paka

instead of really

~/paka

as shown? Or am I missing some interesting samba mapping magic?

As you can see, in fstab he uses the full path: "/home/paka/cifs". the "~" will not work in fstab. Which user would it use? -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 42.2 x86_64 "Malachite" at Telcontar)

On 04/08/17 04:23, Carlos E. R. wrote:

Oh, scrap the above. The directory exists. The error about "no such device" should then refer to "//192.168.0.254/media". The "device".

Anyway, the presence of "x-systemd.automount" means it should automatically mount but fails for some reason. The system log should have entries about that.

After a fresh boot this morning, I was still getting the same mount error in Dolphin, though last night I'd tried changing the uid/gid in fstab to numeric values just to eliminate that possibility. So I changed them back to my user/group name this morning and was taking a look at the systemd journal in YaST (I have no idea how to view it otherwise). There was nothing obvious to see there. And then, mysteriously, in the background, something must have changed because I noticed the icon in the automatically created entry for the share in Dolphin's Places (as opposed to the link I'd created manually) had changed to green. When I clicked on it, I was now browsing //192.168.0.254/media, mounted on /home/media, as it should be. But the location bar shows 'media on 192.168.0.254', or in editable mode, '/home/media' so I don't know for sure if I'm browsing it under the smb or ftp protocol - my suspicions are roused simply because I'm not seeing the directory listing delays I was getting before under smb. So whilst it's good that it's now working, it's baffling in that I don't know for sure why it wasn't doing so before and what has suddenly caused a change. I had previously rebooted the machine, but perhaps there was something else missing or misconfigured in fstab yesterday. I tried re-adding the _netdev option last night. In the systemd journal this morning I see (summarizing since I can't copy from YaST): an automount request for home-media starting of Network Manager Wait Online mounting of /home/media FS-Cache loaded key type DNS resolver registered Netfs 'cifs' registered for caching Key types spnego / idmap registered All this occurs about four minutes after boot, but after I'd already gone in and changed the uid/gid back from numeric values in fstab. Then, a minute later, I see unmounting of /home/media, and this mounting/unmounting charade plays out many times over, sometimes once a minute - as would correspond with the x.systemd.idle-timout=60 option in fstab, whilst at other times it goes quiet for longer periods, regardless of whether I have a file manager window open or not. I'll see what results I get on the other non-openSUSE machine. I can't yet know if this is going to mount reliably whenever needed or not. More time / boots / suspends needed to confirm.

The thing is, if I'm not mistaken, by using samba, or cifs, the disk is accessed with Windows type permissions. Ie, it things it is a FAT disk, or NTFS disks, which doesn't support linux type "user" UIDS.

<snip>

No, they will not. Samba is a Windows protocol. Ie, it is a Linux emulation of a Windows protocol, so it can not transmit on the wire Linux permissions/ownerships.

On the server there is probably a table of which windows users correspond to the local (to the server) Linux users.

There is a command to create (in the server) the "windows" users and passwords: pdbedit

Also:

/etc/samba/smbusers: # This file allows you to map usernames from the clients to the server. # Unix_name = SMB_name1 SMB_name2 ... root = administrator

I don't know how I can extract any further info from the Samba server (the Linux-based router in this case) to even know what usernames are set up on that side. I only know that it was defaulting to user 'freebox' and UID 4242, with WORKGROUP. This dialog is about all the router offers me: http://paste.opensuse.org/6604f82a Is there anything to do under the 'Windows Domain Membership' dialog in YaST -> Network Services? Presumably not *if* it now just works as I need it to. So I'm currently browsing the share as a guest but forcing my user and group ownership. I need to test writing to the share from both a file manager, an application like Clementine, and from both PCs. And if that much works, to see if I can get the other PC to stop presenting a login dialog to the share after each boot. gumb -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Am Donnerstag, 3. August 2017, 19:12:59 CEST schrieb gumb:

[...] Ok, the storm currently passing over seems to have enlivened my head and I'm looking at this again. Before I go reformatting the problematic partition, I'm trying to modify the fstab line and mount it again whilst plugged into the router. I've initially set it like this, as per the above advice: //192.168.0.254/media /home/media cifs noauto,guest,uid=gumb,gid=users,x-systemd.automount,x-systemd.idle-timeout=6 0,nofail 0 0

Trying to mount in Dolphin I get the following error: An error occurred while accessing 'Home', the system responded: mount: only root can mount //192.168.0.254/media on /home/media

What exactly are you trying to mount in Dolphin? When using automount, you actually do not mount anymore, you just open the regular directory: /home/media

[...] Anyway, I checked the ownership of /home/media and it was set as root:root, although I know for sure I changed this to gumb:users a couple of weeks ago. [...]

When mounting, the directory you mount on will lose its ownership and permissions and get the ownership permissions of the mounted file system. That's the point of mounting. :)

[...] Does that prove that the underlying OS on the Freebox is Linux?

Not necessarily, but https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freebox says the same.

From there I've figured out to do: ~> smbclient \\\\192.168.0.254\\media {my password} I had hoped to see the real ownership of files but neither the ls nor the dir command gives me that. Perhaps I'm barking up the wrong tree - I suppose file ownership on a Samba share will not resemble Unix norms?

Without Samba unix extensions enabled on the Freebox, you cannot see the original ownership and permissions. Gruß Jan -- When people are free to do as they choose, they usually imitate each other. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 05/08/17 19:14, Jan Ritzerfeld wrote:

What exactly are you trying to mount in Dolphin? When using automount, you actually do not mount anymore, you just open the regular directory: /home/media

When mounting, the directory you mount on will lose its ownership and permissions and get the ownership permissions of the mounted file system. That's the point of mounting. :)

I probably confuse the concept in the way I express things sometimes. Specifically, what I was trying to do, was access the mounted partition using the auto-generated link under 'Devices' in Dolphin's Places panel. In any case, after booting both machines today, I've found that I can indeed now browse directly to /home/media, and without any login prompts on the AV Linux box. By contrast, if I try accessing the partition any other way on that machine, via the smb/ftp links already created in Thunar, or by going to Browse Network and going through any of the options there, I always get the login prompt. But I can ignore that for now, the share mounts automatically and that's the thing that counts. I still don't understand why there's a difference between looking at the mounted partition and browsing it as smb://whatever - in the sense that doing the latter incurs delays in directory listings and results in some mangled names. Are you suggesting no special protocol like smb is employed once the share is mounted? I changed the location of the music library in Clementine to directly reference /home/media/Music, and it updated the library faster than previously going via /run/user/1001/gvfs/smb-share:server=192.168.0.254,share=media However, I noticed many missing items in the library. I have many - probably hundreds - of albums with special characters like : or ? in the path or filename. This has never been a problem since I'm only accessing the music collection on Linux systems. But since Samba still has its heart in the twentieth century I did some searching and read that there is a mount.cifs option, "mapchars" which translates six of the seven characters that Samba doesn't permit (all except the backslash). I added that to my fstab line, but I can still neither see those albums in Clementine nor view the files on the mounted partition (even after a reboot). For example, I can see and browse to ABBA Gold Greatest Hits, but not to More ABBA Gold: More ABBA Hits (And before anybody takes me up on that, I will not hear any anti-ABBA sentiments from hipsters on this list :) I can see the latter directory in Dolphin, but if I enter the directory, no files are listed. If I browse there under ftp, I see the files, they haven't gone anywhere. And if I browse via smb:// the latter directory still has a mangled name but I can view the files inside. This despite having added "mangled names = No" to my smb.conf file. I have also noticed on the last few shutdowns and reboots, I get the annoying delay of a minute and a half, as mentioned in another recent thread ("Stop Jobs taking too long"). I'd never had this previously so this Samba share/mount must be responsible. Reading that and another thread, I checked whether nmb was enabled and running. It was disabled and inactive. Do I need 'nmbd' running? Does that serve any purpose in my use case? gumb -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

I've been all round the houses with this, or at least all round a very extensive housing estate with social problems and bad landscaping. Of course I haven't been hammering away at this full-time, just in odd moments when I'm not drained from other activities, but it's quite absurd that it's now over a month since I set about what I assumed would be a relatively simple configuration change to the way I access my music files, and here I am bedraggled weeks later having to accept probable defeat, or at least one of a selection of pitiful compromises. More comments below... On 06/08/17 21:07, Jan Ritzerfeld wrote:

And this way, you're trying to mount the network device added to your fstab. But you don't have to mount anymore, systemd will mount it automatically. Here, I added a link under "Places" that just points to the directory where the network device will be mounted.

snip

And besides the unnecessary login prompt, now any application on your machine can access the share since it is a regular directory, now.

snip

When using an fstab entry, a kernel module will handle the smb protocol. You can see the mount including all options "mount | column -t".

When using GNOME, the GVFS (Gnome Virtual File System) will handle it. Non- GNOME applications can access the share via the directory /run/user/{UID}/ gvfs/smb-share:... and you should see the mount via "gvfs-mount -l" but there are no options.

When using KDE, a KIO slave (kio_smb) will handle it.

snip

For some people GVFS is slow and for others mount.cifs is...

...

However, I noticed many missing items in the library. I have many - probably hundreds - of albums with special characters like : or ? in the path or filename. This has never been a problem since I'm only accessing the music collection on Linux systems. But since Samba still has its heart in the twentieth century I did some searching and read that there is a mount.cifs option, "mapchars" which translates six of the seven characters that Samba doesn't permit (all except the backslash). I added that to my fstab line, but I can still neither see those albums in Clementine nor view the files on the mounted partition (even after a reboot). For example, I can see and browse to ABBA Gold Greatest Hits, but not to More ABBA Gold: More ABBA Hits

Too bad. Did you reboot after adding "mapchars"?

Yes I've always rebooted each time, especially after reading that other recent thread on here about how to reload systemd automounts. Too much complexity / uncertainty, so I reboot.

And "mapchars" doesn't work without Unicode, but Unicode should be the default. However, all this strongly depends on the settings of your Freebox. Perhaps you find the correct options needed in some French forum. E.g., I found iocharset=utf8,codepage=cp850 However, you should open another thread specific to the name mangling and charset problem. I got used to the restriction and replaced all these special characters in my files.

snip

...

I can see the latter directory in Dolphin, but if I enter the directory, no files are listed. If I browse there under ftp, I see the files, they haven't gone anywhere. And if I browse via smb:// the latter directory still has a mangled name but I can view the files inside. This despite having added "mangled names = No" to my smb.conf file.

AFAIK "mangled names" is a server option, so it has to be set on the Freebox and it is quite useless on your machine.

The issue of the mangled names isn't a killer blow. That can be worked around by using FTP in the file manager, and when using Samba in Clementine everything I see is based on tags so it doesn't cause any visible changes to filenames within the program. But the problem with Samba fstab mounts not translating seven characters including, most notably, the colon and question mark, and in turn rendering many of my files inaccessible, stifles all my plans. I've not been able to resolve it. I've tried variations with codepage=unicode or codepage=cp850. Renaming large parts of my music collection and abiding by these name restrictions for the foreseeable future, all for sake of some filesystem compatibility with outmoded Windows-esque leanings, is just ideologically unacceptable for me! Especially considering this is a Linux-based router communicating with a Linux PC. It's illogical. I sought help on the Free newsgroups and it appears NFS is not possible. But given how FTP seems to work fine, I started looking into the possibility of mounting the drive via FTP, and read up on curlftpfs. Though not updated much in years, it seemed like it might provide the answer. I configured the following line in fstab: curlftpfs#mafreebox.freebox.fr/media /home/media fuse rw,user,noauto,allow_other,uid=gumb,gid=users,x-systemd.automount,x-systemd.idle-timeout=60,nofail,_netdev 0 0 Difficult to know for sure if all these options are recognized since the official documentation (http://curlftpfs.sourceforge.net/) and man page don't list some of the options people advise on other random websites, e.g. _netdev. But after a reboot, I can access /home/media no problems and I don't see any worrying messages in the journal. Indeed, it doesn't litter it with mount/unmount entries every minute like happens with systemd.automount via Samba. And if I select a track from the music collection using the file browser in Clementine, it plays. But the good news ends there. In trying to update the music library in Clementine on my second PC, after a short while it hangs, locking up much of the system. There's no CPU overloading, I just can't open a file manager or browse anywhere, and in trying to kill Clementine, the process always remains listed in the task manager. Various things stop working and eventually I have to reboot, which itself hangs for a while. I've tried a couple of changes to the fstab line by putting a numeric UID/GID or adding ftp_method=singlecwd, to no avail. It got up to 95% updating one time but the light on the drive stops flashing and then extinguishes, meaning it's gone to sleep and Clementine has presumably given up or gone wrong somewhere. The Internet is littered with reports of curlftpfs being buggy as hell and causing hangs and whatnot. Even if I could just about make it work, it feels like one great hack. Alas, I don't think this avenue's worth pursuing any further. I thought about going back to look at the autofs Samba mount method proposed earlier in this thread, but I assume that would result in the same problem with non-translated characters? So I have to avoid the fstab approach entirely and manually mount the Samba share. And deal with the annoying password prompts on the second PC. But the main pitfall is that if I forget to mount first, not only does Clementine whisk through my playlist producing multiple errors every second for non-existent files, but worse, if I click to update the library, it finds nothing, and in the past this has resulted once or twice in the application overwriting my database with a blank, and all my extensive library customizations are gone forever. Perhaps I need to make sure I backup Clementine's configs more regularly. Is there some script that will try to access //192.168.0.254/media whenever I start up Clementine, ensuring the drive is mounted before I try to play a track, or at least prompting me for a password, and which will fail gracefully if the drive isn't attached? I know zilch about scripting. If I have to spend more days or weeks learning that too, I think I'll just buy a wind-up gramophone and go live in a cave. gumb -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 20/08/17 00:48, gumb wrote:

Answering myself, like a madman...

...

I thought about going back to look at the autofs Samba mount method proposed earlier in this thread, but I assume that would result in the same problem with non-translated characters? So I have to avoid the fstab approach entirely and manually mount the Samba share. Perhaps not. I get very easily lost in this labyrinthine thread. Seems

On 19/08/17 23:47, gumb wrote: this was what was proposed by Jan previously:

...

However, if AV Linux does not use systemd or you don't want to edit your fstab, use the old autofs/automount. Install autofs and add at the end of /etc/auto.master: /{existing base path for all mounts}     /etc/auto.cifs  --timeout 60

Then, create /etc/auto.cifs with the following content: media -fstype=cifs,guest ://192.168.0.254/media

"/etc/init.d/autofs reload" and you should be able to browse to /{existing base path for all mounts}/media

I'll have another look at that tomorrow. Maybe autofs is still an option. Head can't contain any more of this tonight. Going insane.

G'night gumb. Don't lose sleep over it.

Yep, you too gumb, good night.

After weeks of wading through a minefield covered with cow-pats I'm forced to give up on this. It seems cifs is the ultimate culprit, this bug report being the culmination of various trails across the web: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=92401 Something changed as of the 3.18 linux kernel causing the mapchars option in the cifs mount fstab entry to have no effect. And so I guess the autofs method will also be affected as it's still a cifs mount. And the bug's sat there stewing, unfixed for the last couple of years. So I have to go back to manually mounting via smbclient, but that gives me file ownership headaches and it also invokes a bloody annoying incessant password prompt under Thunar/XFCE when accessing files anonymously. So, I'll turn my attentions to the summer. ...oh, what? Summer's over? Feck it. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 2017-08-06 16:36, gumb wrote:

On 05/08/17 19:14, Jan Ritzerfeld wrote:

...

What exactly are you trying to mount in Dolphin? When using automount, you actually do not mount anymore, you just open the regular directory: /home/media

When mounting, the directory you mount on will lose its ownership and permissions and get the ownership permissions of the mounted file system. That's the point of mounting. :)

I probably confuse the concept in the way I express things sometimes. Specifically, what I was trying to do, was access the mounted partition using the auto-generated link under 'Devices' in Dolphin's Places panel.

In any case, after booting both machines today, I've found that I can indeed now browse directly to /home/media, and without any login prompts on the AV Linux box. By contrast, if I try accessing the partition any other way on that machine, via the smb/ftp links already created in Thunar, or by going to Browse Network and going through any of the options there, I always get the login prompt. But I can ignore that for now, the share mounts automatically and that's the thing that counts.

I still don't understand why there's a difference between looking at the mounted partition and browsing it as smb://whatever - in the sense that doing the latter incurs delays in directory listings and results in some mangled names. Are you suggesting no special protocol like smb is employed once the share is mounted?

If you go to "smb://whatever" you are telling the browser to handle it all by itself, whereas if you just browse the /home/media directory it is the system which handles it, for any application that tries to open files there.

I changed the location of the music library in Clementine to directly reference /home/media/Music, and it updated the library faster than previously going via /run/user/1001/gvfs/smb-share:server=192.168.0.254,share=media

Of course. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 42.2 x86_64 "Malachite" at Telcontar)

On 2017-07-17 00:59, gumb wrote:

Further examination of my files on the drive would suggest that it's the long filenames that have not been truncated but simply massacred and transformed into gobbledegook. I assume this is the tedious result of samba using Windows Joliet or some-such misery?

Names are never truncated, but auto converted to 8.3 format. With complex long names, the results are unreadable. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 42.2 x86_64 "Malachite" at Telcontar)

Am Sonntag, 16. Juli 2017, 10:05:34 CEST schrieb John Andersen:

[...] On this issue, I have several similar situations with plug-able storage, and network attached devices, (NAS box, Western Digital Drives, etc.) I've found that If I add an entry into fstab for these things (and set it to user-mountable rather than automount) it behaves better when accessed by Dolphin and other applications. Previews are available, etc. Really helps with photo libraries

You could use systemd automount or the old autofs: https://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse/2017-06/msg00631.html

If I just use automount features of kde it is somewhat more limited and problematic.

IMHO that's bcause accessing samba shares via smb:// URLs is KDE specific and won't work with all applications. Gruß Jan -- Help Stamp Out and Eliminate Redundancy -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Am Sonntag, 16. Juli 2017, 22:20:18 CEST schrieb gumb:

On 16/07/17 19:34, Jan Ritzerfeld wrote: [...]

...

IMHO that's bcause accessing samba shares via smb:// URLs is KDE specific and won't work with all applications.

Since my other box connects fine with no special setup, for the moment I'd like to avoid having to create fstab entries. [...]

Using the old autofs/automount service you don't need to edit fstab but you have to edit a configuration file and add another. So, there will be little chance to render your system unbootable.

I've just installed Smb4K v2.01 from KDE:Extra, which seems to work miracles for others judging from some forum posts, but immediately upon launching, where it tries to initiate a network scan, it comes up with an error: Retrieving the list of available domains failed

Nothing more?

I'm starting to wish I hadn't bothered. Not only has this already stolen half my weekend, but browsing through some of my music files on the shared drive from the other machine, I see many of the directory and filenames have now been inexplicably randomized. It could take weeks to repair the damage.

Just browsing them shouldn't alter any data on your disk. If you physically connect the drive to one of your computers, you will see the original file names again. However, when browsing the samba share, files with illegal name (for Windows/ SMB) might look(!) mangled. The samba server on your Freebox does this on the fly for compatibility with Windows. Gruß Jan -- There is no greater wrath than a woman scorned. (or one that thinks she was) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 17/07/17 11:09, Jan Ritzerfeld wrote:

...

Using the old autofs/automount service you don't need to edit fstab but you have to edit a configuration file and add another. So, there will be little chance to render your system unbootable.

...

I've just installed Smb4K v2.01 from KDE:Extra, which seems to work miracles for others judging from some forum posts, but immediately upon launching, where it tries to initiate a network scan, it comes up with an error: Retrieving the list of available domains failed

Nothing more?

Nope

...

...

I'm starting to wish I hadn't bothered. Not only has this already stolen half my weekend, but browsing through some of my music files on the shared drive from the other machine, I see many of the directory and filenames have now been inexplicably randomized. It could take weeks to repair the damage.

Just browsing them shouldn't alter any data on your disk. If you physically connect the drive to one of your computers, you will see the original file names again. However, when browsing the samba share, files with illegal name (for Windows/ SMB) might look(!) mangled. The samba server on your Freebox does this on the fly for compatibility with Windows.

Phew! Well thank feck for that. I plugged it back directly into the PC's USB port and indeed, the original filenames show as before. I haven't double-checked yet how the names translate within something like Clementine. If they get forced into 8:3 format there I'd have to look at NFS, FTP or some other way of accessing the drive. Mostly filenames don't determine how things are shown in media players. It's

Op maandag 17 juli 2017 19:39:43 CEST schreef gumb: the tags. Only if no tags are present, filenames are used. There are beautiful tools around to tag files from filenames, album and artist folders. F.e. easytag. -- Gertjan Lettink, a.k.a. Knurpht openSUSE Board Member openSUSE Forums Team -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 2017-07-16 22:20, gumb wrote:

On 16/07/17 19:34, Jan Ritzerfeld wrote:

...

Am Sonntag, 16. Juli 2017, 10:05:34 CEST schrieb John Andersen:

...

[...]

...

...

If I just use automount features of kde it is somewhat more limited and problematic.

IMHO that's bcause accessing samba shares via smb:// URLs is KDE specific and won't work with all applications.

Since my other box connects fine with no special setup, for the moment I'd like to avoid having to create fstab entries. But in any case, I can't get that far yet. Something just absolutely stands in the way of making a connection in KDE. Doing some DuckDuckGoogling I'm starting to stumble across various posts that suggest this is, and has been, a known problem going back years.

Actually, using fstab would clear your KDE problems, as the connection would be handled externally to it. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 42.2 x86_64 "Malachite" at Telcontar)

On 2017-07-17 16:23, Jan Ritzerfeld wrote:

Am Montag, 17. Juli 2017, 12:56:06 CEST schrieb Carlos E. R.:

...

[...] Actually, using fstab would clear your KDE problems, as the connection would be handled externally to it.

Not necessarily because the mDNS host name resolution is broken on his machine because even ping can't resolve the host name.

So use the IP. It is the router, the IP is fixed. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 42.2 x86_64 "Malachite" at Telcontar)