Inability to browse Windows shares.

[Steve Langasek]

Hi Mark,

On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 07:20:06PM +0000, Mark Ellse wrote:
> Jono Bacon suggested I subscribe to this list to raise the profile of bug
> 207072. This bug is a Nautilus one. It prevents Nautilus (and therefore the
> normal Ubuntu user) from browsing Windows shares on an Ubuntu computer
> connected to a Windows network.

Yes, this is a very unfortunate bug that we have found little traction on to
date.  Despite my own best efforts I was unable to come up with a patch that
fixes this issue without causing regressions for other use cases, probably
due to a failure to understand how the gvfs APIs in GNOME are meant to work.

I'm happy to see the profile of this bug raised, but I'm not at all
optimistic about the prospects of finding a solution without help from
upstream.

Fortunately it looks like there may be some progress in the upstream bug
report, so that a solution might be possible for the next Ubuntu 8.04 point
release.

> When Hardy was first released, it worked as well. But some update prevented
> browing, and hence it has become useless.

It's possible you're seeing a different bug, then, as bug #207072 has been
present since the hardy release and affects any attempts at browsing Windows
networks from the GNOME desktop when using Active Directory authentication.

> What interests me is that when I email Jono about the bug, he doesn't know
> anything about it. So there are clearly a large number of people who are
> using, and talking about, Ubuntu without having to experience that important
> Ubuntu-Windows interface in which a large part of the world lives.

Since this bug is specifically about connections within Active Directory
realms, it indeed appears to be the case that many of our users are
unaffected, including many who use Windows servers in a standalone
configuration or as part of an NT4 domain.  I know that's little
consolation, but I hope it sheds some light on how the problem managed to be
overlooked upstream.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek at ubuntu.com                                     vorlon at debian.org