Issues accessing windows shares

[Andy]

Rudi von Staden wrote:
> Nautilus seems to have some issues in browsing Windows shares. If I
> use the computer -> network link and then browse to some network
> location, it will show me the files fine; I can even drag the files
> onto my desktop, but if I try double-clicking on a file, it will come
> up with a message something like the following:
> 
> file://home/(user)/smb://(user)@(host)/(share)/(folder)/(file) does not exist.

This is common across most (all?) distros - it's because the app doesn't 
understand that smb:// means use the SMB protocol rather than the 
regular file system. It's not a fault with Nautilus. When you mount a 
share, it becomes accessible via the normal file-system calls so 
anything can see it, but if you just browse the network via Nautilus and 
click on a file then the app which starts will be passed the smb:// 
address and will only be able to open it if it can use the SMB protocol.

As an analogy - try opening gedit and then asking it to open 
http://www.google.com (or any other web site address) - it'll fail 
because it doesn't understand how to use the http protocol. SMB (i.e. an 
smb:// type address) is another protocol in much the same way.

HTH

Andy B