RAW thumbnails on remote NAS

Even on my Manjaro Xfce system, I experience the same “frozen / delayed” shutdowns when I use the fstab method to mount SMB shares. However, if I manually unmount the share first, then the shutdown sequence is nearly immediate.

I get hit with a double-whammy if there is a network disruption before unmounting the share, as the system “chokes” since it doesn’t have an active network connection to properly “disconnect”?

Honestly, it’s very odd, and desktop Linux has yet to catch up to Windows when it comes to accessing SMB network shares. (GVFS and KIO-fuse are very slow and primitive compared to proper standard mounts, yet the latter yields strange issues when suspending, rebooting, or shutting down.) In fairness, SMB is a Microsoft technology. :wink:

It’s for this reason why I shy away from using a static fstab entry for dynamic/network shares.

An alternative approach can be to use systemd mount units or the older legacy method of automount. Both I believe expose your password either in the command itself or by storing it in the plain in a hidden/secret file (which you alluded to.) This is another reason I like using Smb4K, since you can configure it to either (1) always prompt for the passphrase, (2) store the credentials in an encrypted KDE Wallet, or (3) store the credentials in a plaintext file. (I use method #1).


You would think if there’s an fstab entry for the SMB share, then the shutdown sequence will automatically and safely unmount it. Perhaps you’re experiencing a “choke” if the system disconnects from the network before unmounting the share? Perhaps there’s a way to instruct it to unmount the filesystems/shares before disconnecting from the network and/or halting the network service?

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Can you change x-systemd.automount to:

noauto,x-systemd.automount,x-systemd.device-timeout=10

That way:

  • noauto = the systemd mount will not be mounted by fstab, but at first use
  • 10 = even if stuck, it will bail out after 10 seconds.

so that will:

  • not make your boot-up longer BUT will make the browsing slower when you first open that directory.
  • will add a maximum of 10 seconds to your shutdown even if you shut down the Windows machine / NAS / … before the Manjaro one.

:grin:

P.S. I’ve never bothered optimising the time-out below 10 seconds, but I’m pretty sure that if you test things out, you’ll be able to shave off a few to many seconds depending on your specific hardware / network.

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Yeah, over the years I’ve come to accept these kinds of imperfetions and I’m at peace with it. I figure the closest thing to higher quality networking is Linux everywhere with Windows in the rearview. Easier said than done, especially for us old timers who cut their teeth on Netware and Windows NT.

Linux on the desktop may have catching up to do but Windows 10 has networking problems that are too unique for words. For stabler throughput I’ve come to trust Linux-to-Windows more than Windows-to-Windows. The former is mostly stable despite all the Samba hoops we jump through. To break the latter’s connection all I need to do is copy a Linux ISO. File dumps between two Windows 10 machines is so bad (audience: “How bad is it?”)… It’s so bad I’ve been tempted to dig up and install NetBEUI just for grins if not for its robust transport.

Smb4k is on my todo list. I’ll start a fresh new post when questions come up. In the meantime I don’t mind the fstab method manually or automated (thanks for the unmount before boot tip, btw). I need to make sure external apps can browse the mounted shares. If that becomes a problem I’ll be ready for another round with Smb4k sooner rather than later.

This is fabby-lous! It all seems to be working but more time is needed to spot problems. So far so good. Many thanks!

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