PLEASE NOTE: Gigolo is a facilitator to access and mount remote shares. It uses the same base gnome back-end client packages as the file manager does so if you're currently having a problem connecting to a remote share, Gigolo isn't going fix that.
STEP 1: Install Gigolo
Code: Select all
sudo apt-get install gigolo
Launch gigolo then go to Edit > Preferences
Interface Tab:
Save window position and geometry
Show status icon in the Notification Area
Start minimized in the Notification Area
Show side panel
Deselect
Show auto-connect error messages
Then Close Preferences and select the "View" button:
enable: "Toolbar", "Side Panel", and "Status Icon"
STEP 3: Network Browsing - Because of a perennial bug in the gnome backend of Mint this will probably not work. Use STEP 3a instead
When you open up gigolo click on the Network tab on the side panel and it will eventually show you all your workgroups and all the hosts within those workgroups. Once you find the share you're looking for simply double click to mount it. A dialog box will open asking for the following information:
Service type: Windows Share
Server: It should be auto filled
Share: It should be auto filled
Username: Only required if your remote share requires credentials.
The remote share should be displayed in the right panel of gigolo and double clicking the share will open a file manager so you can access it's contents.
STEP 3a: Connecting Directly to a Specific Machine
You don't have to browse to the remote machine you can connect to it directly by name or ip address:
Gigolo > Actions > Connect > Service Type = Windows Share:
To bypass the gnome bug make sure to specify the Server and Share.
Leave domain and user name blank.
STEP 4: Auto Mounting Remote Shares on Boot
First: Set gigolo to start at login.
Menu > System Settings > Startup Applications > + (Add) > Choose Application > gigolo
Second: Once you access the remote share using the method described above in STEP 3, you can set this up to mount the remote share automatically:
In the right side panel of gigolo right click the remote share and select "Create Bookmark"
There you can give it a short bookmark name as well as other authentication information you want to pass to the server on boot. The versatility of this utility comes in when you enable the "Auto-Connect" option. This will do two things:
(1) If the server having the remote share is not up at the time you boot, the "Auto-Connect" option will probe the network at an interval specified by the "Bookmark Auto-Connect Interval" you set in STEP 2 and then mount the share.
(2) The other thing it will do is reconnect to the share if the connection to the server is interrupted for whatever reason.
Note: The Auto Mount will happen at login so there is no need to reboot to see if it works as advertised. Just logout and log in again.
Upon login you should see a mount icon to your share on the Desktop as well as on the left side panel of Nemo:
ADDITIONAL BENEFITS
Ubuntu has changed the way services are started and when things are mounted and as a result it has introduced a number of bugs. As it turns out, gigolo can actually work around a couple of them.
BUG 1: fstab is executed before the network is up.
The traditional way of automounting a remote share is to add a line in fstab that will execute on boot. The problem is that because of the changes Ubuntu has made, fstab sometimes executes before the network is up. There used to be a parameter "_netdev" that one could add to the fstab expression but that no longer reliably works. The "Auto-Connect" option in gigolo solves this problem by periodically probing the network and mounting when the share is available on the network.
BUG 2: Shutdown hangs when a remote share is mounted.
If you have a remote share mounted in the traditional manner, shutting down the system hangs because the network is shut down before the mountpoints are unmounted. Gigolo works in userspace. At shutdown the system will logoff the user first and will automatically unmount the remote share before passing to the root level shutdown sequence which shuts down the network.
UPDATE: As pointed out by member jan_goyvaerts below, when using LMDE XFCE:
Then, you may need to add the following lines to your ~/.local/share/applications/defaults.list so that Thunar is used to open folders by gvfs-open:
x-directory/gnome-default-handler=Thunar.desktop
inode/directory=Thunar.desktop
x-directory/normal=Thunar.desktop