[SOLVED] CIFS-related issues in XFCE

bealsc · 2022-10-08 00:38:45

Hello, first post from a long time XFCE fan and user.

I have an old network attached storage device that is managed by an fstab entry. When the device is turned on it is accessible by clicking a Thunar bookmark which mounts it on demand. But when turned off the bookmark is still clickable, but Thunar cannot mount it since the device is unavailable so Thunar freezes and needs force quit. I managed to fix this before on an older system but forgot how. Any pointers would be appreciated.

The fstab entry is:
//<IP redacted>/folder /mnt/nas/folder cifs defaults,noauto,x-systemd.automount,_netdev,rw,noperm,credentials=/path/to/cred,vers=1.0 0 0

Also to point out a Parole media player bug related to the above:
Parole is only functional when the NAS is turned on. When it's off, the Parole interface loads but is unresponsive and must be force quit. I suspect Parole always tries to access the device even if unavailable, and instead of timing out it deadlocks indefinitely. No warnings or error messages are shown if run from Terminal.

OS is Debian 11 Stable with XFCE 4.16

Last edited by KBar (2022-10-11 00:25:20)

ToZ · 2022-10-08 01:54:10

Hello and welcome.

Which kernel are you running? Sounds like this kernel bug.

bealsc · 2022-10-08 02:21:14

Hey thanks for the fast reply. I am using the default kernel shipped with Debian, uname -r says 5.10.0-18-amd64

ToZ · 2022-10-08 02:41:32

Then its not that bug.

Your other option (they way I access my NAS smb 1.0 share) is to use GVFS/Gio from thunar? Basically type:

smb://xx.xx.xx.xx/sharename

...into thunar's browser, or use the browse network functionality to locate/open the share when needed. Can you test this and see if you experience the same when the share is offline?

bealsc · 2022-10-08 06:29:58

smb://<IP>/<Share> in Thunar does not work for me. Tried twice. First try after a few seconds I got "Failed to mount Windows share: Connection timed out". Turned out the device was in standby. Woke up device and tried again and got "Failed to mount Windows share: Software caused connection abort". What software could have done that is beyond me.

I experimented mounting with NFS (had to install nfs-common) instead of CIFS to see if that would change anything. One of the folders that mounts fine with CIFS doesn't mount properly with NFS (it contains only device help files so is not essential). Thunar still freezes when accessing mount location when the device is inactive same as with CIFS. Also performance was not as good as with CIFS. So much for that.

It's late now so I'll take another stab at this in a day or two after more research (and sleep). Thanks again for the assistance.

ToZ · 2022-10-08 11:13:24

bealsc wrote:

smb://<IP>/<Share> in Thunar does not work for me. Tried twice. First try after a few seconds I got "Failed to mount Windows share: Connection timed out". Turned out the device was in standby. Woke up device and tried again and got "Failed to mount Windows share: Software caused connection abort". What software could have done that is beyond me.

Make sure you have the "gvfs-backends" package installed.

bealsc · 2022-10-11 00:04:19

ToZ wrote:

Make sure you have the "gvfs-backends" package installed.

Yep, gvfs-backends is installed here, and it still throws the connection abort error. I also tried installing the smbclient package and it still didn't work. Oh well.

I will make a separate thread soon detailing what I do (and do not) have installed on my system, which is built from the ground up using minimal Debian base, and maybe that will offer more insight. Anyway, after some trial and error (and wiki reading) over the weekend I managed to solve the freezing and deadlock issues I was having (the thunar location issue still stands for now). All I had to do was find the right combination of mount options for the device and everything was peachy.

Here is what I ended up putting in /etc/fstab:

# NAS folders
# Config and device help
//device_ip/download /media/nas/config cifs credentials=/path/to/cred,noauto,ro,users,vers=1.0,_netdev
#
# Download share
//device_ip/download /media/nas/download cifs credentials=/path/to/cred,noauto,rw,users,vers=1.0,_netdev
#
# Public share
//device_ip/public /media/nas/public cifs credentials=/path/to/cred,noauto,rw,users,vers=1.0,_netdev

By mounting to the media directory instead of mount, the share folders conveniently show up in the Devices section of Thunar and optionally on the desktop (this didn't happen when mounted in /mnt). Clicking them when device is off doesn't freeze Thunar now, nice. The users option let my user mount AND unmount without having to be root (I could only mount before). I removed the x-systemd.automount option because it was causing issues; sometimes it wouldn't unmount properly resulting in a 2 minute boot/shutdown delay, also it would always attempt to mount even though noauto option is specified which caused more delays if the device was off or slow to respond. The only downside to removing it is the share folder must be manually mounted before an application will read data from it, no big deal.

As far as I'm concerned, this thread now SOLVED
Appreciate the help, ToZ

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#1 2022-10-08 00:38:45

[SOLVED] CIFS-related issues in XFCE

#2 2022-10-08 01:54:10

Re: [SOLVED] CIFS-related issues in XFCE

#3 2022-10-08 02:21:14

Re: [SOLVED] CIFS-related issues in XFCE

#4 2022-10-08 02:41:32

Re: [SOLVED] CIFS-related issues in XFCE

#5 2022-10-08 06:29:58

Re: [SOLVED] CIFS-related issues in XFCE

#6 2022-10-08 11:13:24

Re: [SOLVED] CIFS-related issues in XFCE

#7 2022-10-11 00:04:19

Re: [SOLVED] CIFS-related issues in XFCE

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