Unusual network share behaviour (F38 Workstation)

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1

Hello,

I have been struggling with some unusual network share behaviour in Fedora 38 Workstation. This issue originally began with Fedora 37 Workstation but persisted through fresh installs and continues in Fedora 38 (fresh install).

My normal PC use includes connecting to a NAS using SMB. I would simply use the Nautilus to connect to my NAS by clicking “other location” and entering the server address but at some point during F37’s life cycle this stopped working as expected. I do this to read/write files directly (playing a video, writing backup files, etc.)

The location will appear to mount normally but attempts to play a video file would give me errors and fail. Similarly when trying to mount an archive for a backup I would receive errors. However, activities within Nautilus itself work 100% as expected and give no errors.

example error for VLC:
Your input can’t be opened: VLC is unable to open the MRL ‘smb://192.168.1.33/video/example%20video.mp4’.

Example error for Pikabackup:
Failed to mount: Location already mounted

I am not the most sophisticated user so this is the extent of my troubleshooting:

  • VLC (flatpak) can not play a file when launched from nautilus but Clapper (flatpak) can play files normally
  • VLC (flatpak) can play files normally when launched from Dolphin (rpm) but not through Nautilus
  • VLC (flatpak) can play files from nautilus running on opensuse tumbleweed
  • VLC (flatpak) can play files normally when launched through nautilus when share is mounted using fstab
  • MPV (rpm) fails to play files normally when launched with Nautilus
  • VLC (flatpak) fails to play files launched from Nautilus for both SMB and SFTP

Any advice on how to approach this issue would be greatly appreciated. I am not sure how to continue troubleshooting. Thank you.

2

Check if Celluloid and VLC installed from RPM work for you.

3

The issue isn’t limited to VLC and video playback, but I think these tests mean that this isn’t an issue of rpm vs flatpak.

  1. celluloid works where VLC doesn’t (both flatpak)
  2. MPV (rpm) and MPV (flatpak) fail to play
  3. totem (rpm) and totem (flatpak) play normally
  4. VLC (flatpak) works when launched from Dolphin
  5. VLC (flatpak) works when launched from Nautilus on suse tumbleweed but not in fedora

The same flatpak will behave differently when playing the file from different file explorers (VLC from nautilus vs dolhpin). Different package formats will behave the same when launched from the same explorer (totem and mpv through nautilus).

4

AFAIK, opening GVFS URI requires GIO support:

> ldd $(type -p celluloid) | grep -e gio
	libgio-2.0.so.0 => /lib64/libgio-2.0.so.0 (0x00007f3dd602e000)

Probably the app you are using is not built with GIO.
Or perhaps there’s a compatibility issue between the library versions.

5

Interesting. I installed fedora 38 again on a spare drive and tried to approximate my current install. When i open a share in Nautilus and copy the location I get different results:

new install (working) - /run/user/1000/gvfs/smb-share:server=192.168.1.33,share=backup/fedorahome

current install (issues) - smb://192.168.1.33/backup/fedorahome

It is unclear to me why it behaves differently between the installs.

6

Copying a specific file or directory gives you its path.
While copying the text in the location bar gives you the URI.
This behavior may vary depending on the installed updates.

7

Is there a way for me to force a specific behaviour? What about preventing it from flipping back and forth once I get it working? It looks to me that my applications prefer a specific behaviour.

Of course I am making the assumption here that this is the reason it is working on one vs the other: /run/user/1000/gvfs/smb-share:server=192.168.1.33,share=backup/fedorahome

8

I’ve tested Celluloid and VLC installed from RPM on Fedora 38 with latest updates.
Actually both players work for me opening an AVI file from Nautilus over SMB.
Since RPMs work fine, it’s probably a flatpak related problem.

9

I will experiment some more and see if I can make it work. Thank you for your help.

EDIT: So I re-installed fedora again and did my normal setup. The issue with network shares returns after removing totem and installing ffmpegthumbnailer through rpmfusion. I suppose I will have to just live without thumbnails for the time being.

Edit 2: it turns out that thumbbnails work normally in nautilus on F38 and i didn’t need to install ffmpegthumbnailer in the first place. I will have to wait and see if this issue comes back but for now everything is working properly and I am very happy.

Thank you for your time and effort helping me resolve this issue.