Mounted windows network folders do not show in open save box on native apps

Question

I have a NAS which I built using OMV as the OS with all my music documents e.t.c. The folders from the NAS are shared via SAMBAI installed gigolo so that certain folders from my NAS are mounted when Elementary OS starts.That works perfectly and the mounted network folders show fine in the file manager but when using applications they do not show in the open/save dialogue boxes. For example the music player I choose to open a file and I am only presented with local locations the network mounts do not show.

Is there anyway around this?

Answer 1

tl;dr: As a workaround, you could create a symlink, say, in your Desktop or home directory to /var/run/user/<UID>/gvfs/smb-share:server=yadayada. Then drag that symlink into the sidebar to create a bookmark, if you want to. That's how I manage to cope.

I, too, find this behavior frustrating. The "native" GTK3 file chooser for elementary OS Loki (pantheon-filechooser-module) seems to be missing this functionality for the time being, but in applications using the older GTK2 one (LibreOffice for example), mounted network locations show up in the sidebar just fine.

The closest I can find to anyone tracking this problem is this GitHub issue for Files.

Furthermore, I can't fathom why, in 2018, after cribbing tons of other ideas from OS X (docks, global menus, Miller columns, app stores, app bundles, launchd, etc.), Linux distros still insist on hiding network filesystem mounts in perverse places like ~/.gvfs, or /var/run/user/<UID>/gvfs. At least with OS X / macOS, mounted network filesystems are still relatively easy to find from the terminal or non-native (Java, GTK, QT) file pickers under /Volumes—in the same place as all the other mounted filesystems.