Navigating to Network Folders is crude at best

[ajax]

My Kubuntu computer seems to have, out of the box, capability to find and access smb shares on my windows computers. However, the useability stinks and I'm hoping there is some way to overcome this problem. Of course that may amount to just learning how it is supposed to work.

When I open Konqueror there is an icon with a hot link called "Network Folders" which finds the Window's Shares. However, I cannot find any mount point in the file system that references these drives. Likewise, I haven't found any way to have the shares show up in the navigation frame. If you navigate off to something in the filesystem there does not seem to be any natural way to navigate back to the network folders. In fact, I haven't been able to figure out how to even return to the original window which does reference the "Network Folders".

Aside from limited/awkward/primitive ability to navigate on Konqueror the file>open dialogs on most applications provide no way to find the "Network Folders".

What do I need to learn? Is there a way to seamlessly access "Network Folders"? Or do I need to go back to using Windows?

[ajax]

Re: Navigating to Network Folders is crude at best

I wouldn't say that this qualifies as handy (i.e., good usability) but something that represents an improvement is outlined as follows:

- Install the smbfs package
- Load smbfs module "sudo modprobe smbfs" (or add smbfs to /etc/modules)
- Make directory/subdirectories for file shares (e.g., /shares/rem-node/rem_share)
- Mount a file share (e.g., "sudo mount -t smbfs //rem_node/rem_share /shares/rem_node/rem_share")

Now you have the file share mounted to the file system and can use conventional mechanisms to access it.

I would be pleased to here of problems that might be attributable to the above or improvements.

[Detonate]

Re: Navigating to Network Folders is crude at best

You can also use fstab entires to mount those shared folders automatically at boot. Then just navigate to the mount point and there you are.

[ajax]

Re: Navigating to Network Folders is crude at best

Yes, I assumed that fstab could be used to do mounts when the system boots. However, the problem with Windows shares is that they come online and go offline as a result of starting and stopping the systems on which they reside. It doesn't do much good to perform operations only a boot time.

[Detonate]

Re: Navigating to Network Folders is crude at best

Well, that is a problem, because if you have them in fstab, and they are offline when you boot, you will get an error message at boot asking if you want to skip mounting those entires. Slows down your boot time. How ever, once booted, if those shares then come online, you could mount them simply by issuing the

sudo mount -a

command.