Having a strange and obscure issue happening with Dolphin/KDE and Network Drives!

[linux-aarhus]

I am assuming you are using samba - simply because it is the most commonly used share method.

Samba can be a complex system and even the simplest setups requires some level of understanding the concepts. It is never plug’n’play - more like plug’n’pray it works.

That is why I have written several guides on how to handle connecting to samba shares and how to share using samba on Manjaro.

• Search results for '@linux-aarhus samba' - Manjaro Linux Forum
• [root tip] [Utility Script] GIO mount samba share

If you are still having issues - you will have to look at your smb.conf - at the very least you must have an empty /etc/samba/smb.conf.

Previews of video and image files over a network file system will slow the system dramatically.

If I recall correct Dolphin wants to create a cached list of files and folders - this can take a long time with a remote file system of the size you describe - if you disrupt the process the cached list will not be complete - yet Dolphin think it is - thus it will only display what is known in the cache - you will have force a reread of the remote file system so dolphin can know what to expect when entering a folder.

With that in mind I think some of your issues is caused by impatience with dolphin processing the entire content of the remote filesystem.

@anonymousbig

how do I enable this mount unit methodology to mount the drive of system startup?

enable --now argument means the unit is enabled and started immediately.

@anonymousbig

I have to manually run the systemctl, specified in your post to get the drive mounted

No you don’t - when a mount unit is enabled - it is started at boot - but - as the device is a network device the Options=_netdev will only mount when network becomes available and the target is available - not sooner.

You may tweak it by implementing an automount unit.

If you do implement an automount - before enable and starting the automount unit - you must disable and stop the mount unit - otherwise automount will fail.

All this is described in the topics I linked you to.

@anonymousbig

However, visiting that same folder in question, with the issue, it still only shows me a partial file list. It shows the same 118 folders. BUT, for whatever reason, it does seem a bit better. Now, if I click another folder, and then back to the folder with the issue, after about 2.5 second, it will pop, and I’ll see the full file list for that folder.

It is a network file system - and as such - you cannot expect a blistering fast experience like you can with a local file system. Also you are using Dolphin - and in my opinion there is far too many issues with it.

2.5s to list 118 folders - that is fast for a network file system.

On my systems I use pacmanfm-qt gvfs-smb gvfs-nfs as file manager - it is a so much better file manager compared to dolphin.

Usually there is no single multipurpose solution - network file systems is highly depending on the knowledge of those maintaining the file servers and consuming the data

@anonymousbig

smb://10.1.1.18/NASDrive/vids

This is not the share itself but a sub folder - so if you put that into the What= then you are going to have issues.

I could have stated in the unit - but I wanted to force you do some reading - a more thorough example

/etc/systemd/system/a-nasdrive.mount

[Unit]
Description=My NASDrive mount

[Mount]
What=//10.1.1.18/NASDrive
Where=/a/nasdrive
Type=cifs
Options=_netdev,rw,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777,credentials=/etc/samba/bla-credentials,version=SMB3
TimeoutSec=30

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

The default samba version is SMB3
The TimeoutSec= is the amount of time elapsed before the mount attempt gives up.

Start the mount unit once - this will create the path with default permissions (root:root) - this may not be the desired permissions - so consider setting the correct permissions

sudo systemctl start a-nasdrive.mount
sudo systemctl stop a-nasdrive.mount

/etc/systemd/system/a-nasdrive.automount

[Unit]
Description=Automount NASDrive using samba
ConditionPathExists=/a/nasdrive

[Automount]
Where=/a/nasdrive
TimeoutIdleSec=300

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

The ConditionPathExists= ensures that you do not try to mount to a non-existing path
The TimeoutIdleSec= is the time elapsed before the file system is disconnected - there is technically no reason to keep the connection alive when it is not used.

sudo systemctl enable --now a-nasdrive.automount

The plus side of using automount for the remote file system - is that you cannot access the path if it is not mounted - thus you will never by accident shadow any content in the local folder - which is possible if the mount has failed due to an inaccessible service.