Mount-Point of smb-shares mounted with Thunar [Solved]

Paradoxon · 2015-09-30 13:40:53

Hey,
Congrats to creating this awesome distro!
I've using the Alpha2-Version without any problems and upgraded by including the repository recently.
I'm new on the forums, so please correct me if I unknowingly do something wrong.

I bookmarked an smb-Share in Thunar(with Go -> Open Location -> smb://..., adding Username and Pw and dragging the Folder into the bar on the left) and it's working fine.
However, I wanted to access it on the commandline.

I expected the mount-point to be in either
* /run/user/1000/gvfs or
* /home/daniel/.gvfs ,
but the former is empty and the latter non-existant.

Where is the mount-point?
Does Thunar 1.6.3 use a different option than gvfs to mount smb-Shares?
Does a mount-point exist at all if I access the smb-Share via Thunar?

(That last one might be a dumb question, but I really don't know... ;-) )

I could't find the answer on google, as no other mount-points are mentioned for either thunar and gvfs and sites I found mainly mention the change from /home/daniel/.gvfs to /run/user/1000/gvfs.
Additionally, I don't know if this might be a Bunsen-Labs-specific issue, an issue of installed packages, a problem with thunar or just a problem of me understanding how mounting smb-Shares works in general.
I hope someone can help me solve this riddle.

Cheers,
Daniel

Last edited by Paradoxon (2015-10-01 12:07:51)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2015-09-30 13:47:46

Paradoxon wrote:

I could't find the answer on google

Maybe you should try a better search engine -- I use https://startpage.com/

If I right-click on your thread title and select "Search Startpage for ...", this is the first link in the list:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2241829

EDIT: Hello and welcome to BunsenLabs!
smile

EDIT2: I don't actually use Samba so I have no idea where the mount point is, sorry.

Paradoxon · 2015-09-30 14:02:23

Hey,
I read that page, of course. ;-)

But /run/user/(my uid)/gvfs/, which should be the mount-point according to that and many other sites, is empty.

That's why I even asked if gvfs is still used by Thunar.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2015-09-30 14:08:12

Paradoxon wrote:

But /run/user/(my uid)/gvfs/, which should be the mount-point according to that and many other sites, is empty.

Yes of course, my apologies -- I didn't read your OP properly.
ops

AFAIK, thunar still uses gvfs for samba -- hopefully someone who actually uses that will post.

All the links I can find say either /run/user/$UID/gvfs or ~/.gvfs
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sa … figuration

tknomanzr · 2015-09-30 14:15:07

Here is the way I would do it. I prefer this way for any remote mounted filesystem as it avoids the mount-point ending up down in the run directory which can create hassles.
First, unmount the share from Thunar so we don't end up with an error when we try to manually mount.
Second:

sudo apt-get install cifs-utils

Lastly:

mount –t cifs ipadd:/sharename /mountpoint –o username=userid,workgroup=workgroupname,password=pass

You could put this in a small wrapper script and run it in ~/bin if you like. I would call it something like mount_smb and give it execute permissions. If you are trying to access a NAS device on your network, chances are it will support ssh and sshfs which is a far better protocol. Worst thing about smb shares is that they are so slow.

Paradoxon · 2015-09-30 15:19:01

@tknomanzr: Thank you for your workaround!
I had two problems with your approach, so I modified your solution:

The mount would fail without sudo, but with sudo the mounted directory is owned by root and copying into the share only works with root permissions. This can be circumvented by adding ,uid=1000,gid=1000
at the end of the mountcommand.
I did not want to add the password into a file, so I defined an alias by adding
alias mntserver="sudo mount –t cifs ipadd:/sharename /mountpoint –o username=userid,workgroup=workgroupname,uid=1000,gid=1000"
to ~.bash_aliases and removed password=pass from the command. I have to type the command as well as my password and the password for the share, but it's doable.

@Head_on_a_Stick: Installed Startpage...;-)

I'm still interested in solving the riddle of the mount-point-location for Thunar, though.

iMBeCil · 2015-09-30 15:26:30

For the record, I regularly use Thunar with gvfs backend to connect and browse remote dirs via sftp.

And according to above hints, I do have a dir '/run/user/your_UID/gvfs' and inside is another dir representing entire remote site. It acts as a mounted remote site. (Just checked.)

I don't use samba, so perhaps there is something different with it?!

twoion · 2015-09-30 15:34:58

Edit: Follow imbecile's hint above first. If you're all good, just ignore the wall of text below.
--

Paradoxon wrote:

I'm still interested in solving the riddle of the mount-point-location for Thunar, though.

FUSE is just an additional backend that GVFS can use to make GVFS mounts available to other, non-GNOME applications. As far as I can gather from some looking around, there is a dedicated daemon which has the task of managing FUSE mounts below ~/.gvfs, called gvfs-fuse-daemon (or at least it was at some point).

Can you check whether gvfs-fuse is installed? If not, install it:

apt-get install gvfs-fuse

Now try logging out and in again or restart (make sure nothing gvfs* is running). Mount all filesystems and check whether there are FUSE exports. You can do so by just running 'mount'.

mount | column -t

there should be a 'type fuse*', or 'type cifs' file system. If in doubt, post the output here.

If that is not the case, check whether 'gvfsd-fuse' is running:

pgrep gvfsd-fuse

if not, try starting it manually

exec /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-fuse

and check for FUSE mount points again.

Last edited by twoion (2015-09-30 15:35:57)

tknomanzr · 2015-09-30 15:39:41

I usually mount to a sub-directory of my home, thus bypassing the need for root permissions. However, that is with sshfs and cifs may work a bit differently. I agree with you about the plain text password. It has been on my mind some even with ssh.
For instance, let us look at this sshfs script where I port the password into the sshfs command:

echo password | sshfs sshd@192.168.1.4:/shares/Public/ /home/tknomanzr/remote -o password_stdin

My thoughts were running along the lines of using a hashing algorithm to hash the password into a file in my home then dehashing it prior to issuing the sshfs command. If done properly, it should provide more physical security than just using a clear text password in a script.

I was going to do my mounts via cifs, then discovered my NAS would allow me ssh access if I turned it on, so I ended up going that route. This was important to me because I like to periodically rsync backups of my BunsenLabs /home /etc and a few files in /var periodically.

twoion · 2015-09-30 15:42:56

If you're using SSHFS I recommend using just passwordless public/private key authentication with ssh. In SMB this is much less pleasant to set up and involves breaking your neck multiple times.

iMBeCil · 2015-09-30 16:00:04

OK, I tried samba+thunar on quick BL vanilla setup in VirtualBox. And there is gvfs dir AFTER(!) I'm successfully connected(see Note2) to the samba share:

imbecil@BL:/run/user/1000/gvfs$ ll
total 0
drwx------ 1 imbecil imbecil 0 Sep 30 17:30 smb-share:server=localhost,share=imbecil

I can enter this dir in terminal, and see all files.

Note1: this is samba server and samba client on the same machine.

Note2: by 'successfully connected' I mean:
a) I put in thunar address 'smb://imbecil@localhost/'
b) thunar listed a few shares as dirs: 'imbecil' and 'printer$'
c) I doubleclicked on 'imbecil' folder/share
d) window popped up asking me for password; I eneter password (created with 'smbpasswd' beforehand), and I successfully entered this dir

Conclusion 1 would be: for me, samba and thunar seem to work as expected.
Conclusion 2: are you sure you are able to browse dirs on your share, i.e. are you sure you are connected to your share with thunar, before you try to find 'gvfs' dir?

iMBeCil · 2015-09-30 16:06:44

@OP ... another idea ... examine/post output of:

$ mount | grep gvfs

after you are successfully connected to your share.

You should have something like:

$ mount | grep gvfs
gvfsd-fuse on /run/user/1000/gvfs type fuse.gvfsd-fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1000,group_id=1000)

(Actually, this is present even before you are connected to the share.)

tknomanzr · 2015-09-30 16:55:02

twoion wrote:

If you're using SSHFS I recommend using just passwordless public/private key authentication with ssh. In SMB this is much less pleasant to set up and involves breaking your neck multiple times.

Yeah that is usually the way I go. Unfortunately the NAS is obstinate and won't let me approach it that way.

Paradoxon · 2015-10-01 10:14:22

Hello again,
and thank you for all your helpful answers!

However, I'm not able to reproduce the problem anymore. As expected, a subfolder for the share exists in /run/user/1000/gvfs now!
Additionally, I can confirm now that it works in a fresh RC1-installation, like iMBeCil pointed out.
I suspect:

I was missing some package. This might have been gvfs-fuse as twoion suspected, as it is installed and running now. However, on my fresh RC1-Installation in virtualbox it must work differently, as gvfs-fuse is not running there.
I installed two packages yesterday: gvfs-utils and thunar-volman.
Probably gvfs-utils pulled in the missing package and that's why it's working now.

@tknomanzr: For smb/cifs, mount only works with sudo for me even if the mountpoint is in my home-directory. I don't know why root-permissions are necessary, but this is the same on every linux I've used, so it's in the package.

Thanks again for all your help!!

iMBeCil · 2015-10-01 10:30:04

Paradoxon wrote:

However, I'm not able to reproduce the problem anymore.

Perhaps you changed a configuration a bit (smb.conf) and forgot to restart smbd ... Or something similar.

But, never mind, you resolved the problem, and that's what is important smile

Please, add something like '[Solved]' to the title of the topic.

tknomanzr · 2015-10-01 13:50:49

Paradoxon wrote:

Hello again,
and thank you for all your helpful answers!
However, I'm not able to reproduce the problem anymore. As expected, a subfolder for the share exists in /run/user/1000/gvfs now!
Additionally, I can confirm now that it works in a fresh RC1-installation, like iMBeCil pointed out.
I suspect:
I was missing some package. This might have been gvfs-fuse as twoion suspected, as it is installed and running now. However, on my fresh RC1-Installation in virtualbox it must work differently, as gvfs-fuse is not running there.
I installed two packages yesterday: gvfs-utils and thunar-volman.
Probably gvfs-utils pulled in the missing package and that's why it's working now.
@tknomanzr: For smb/cifs, mount only works with sudo for me even if the mountpoint is in my home-directory. I don't know why root-permissions are necessary, but this is the same on every linux I've used, so it's in the package.
Thanks again for all your help!!

Probably because it is assumed if you are accessing an smb share, the chances are good you are touching a potentially comprimied filesystem? wink

#1 2015-09-30 13:40:53

Mount-Point of smb-shares mounted with Thunar [Solved]

#2 2015-09-30 13:47:46

Re: Mount-Point of smb-shares mounted with Thunar [Solved]

#3 2015-09-30 14:02:23

Re: Mount-Point of smb-shares mounted with Thunar [Solved]

#4 2015-09-30 14:08:12

Re: Mount-Point of smb-shares mounted with Thunar [Solved]

#5 2015-09-30 14:15:07

Re: Mount-Point of smb-shares mounted with Thunar [Solved]

#6 2015-09-30 15:19:01

Re: Mount-Point of smb-shares mounted with Thunar [Solved]

#7 2015-09-30 15:26:30

Re: Mount-Point of smb-shares mounted with Thunar [Solved]

#8 2015-09-30 15:34:58

Re: Mount-Point of smb-shares mounted with Thunar [Solved]

#9 2015-09-30 15:39:41

Re: Mount-Point of smb-shares mounted with Thunar [Solved]

#10 2015-09-30 15:42:56

Re: Mount-Point of smb-shares mounted with Thunar [Solved]

#11 2015-09-30 16:00:04

Re: Mount-Point of smb-shares mounted with Thunar [Solved]

#12 2015-09-30 16:06:44

Re: Mount-Point of smb-shares mounted with Thunar [Solved]

#13 2015-09-30 16:55:02

Re: Mount-Point of smb-shares mounted with Thunar [Solved]

#14 2015-10-01 10:14:22

Re: Mount-Point of smb-shares mounted with Thunar [Solved]

#15 2015-10-01 10:30:04

Re: Mount-Point of smb-shares mounted with Thunar [Solved]

#16 2015-10-01 13:50:49

Re: Mount-Point of smb-shares mounted with Thunar [Solved]

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