I’m having this problem while trying to watch a video (500MB) over a samba share, “mounted” via dolphin.
Both players just show a black screen.
It seems there are a number of bugs in KDE (4.4) related to this, already reported.
I think dolphin/kde/kio/whatever is trying to copy the video in local /tmp (which in my case fails, not enough space on my netbook).
Now I’m wondering… using NFS would make any difference ?
Anyone here knows, before I start learning something (NFS) that I would not even need ?
If you copy the file locally (or to USB pen drive) does it play then? Have you installed the correct codecs for the video? Does the video play on any other computer?
The choice between NFS and SAMBA is quite simple. If MS windows is involved use SAMBA (NFS will not work). When only Unix/Linux systems are involved use NFS (it is the native way forr remote mounting and it supports a lot of UNix/Linux things that SAMBA does not, like owners, groups, access bits).
Still, my samba network is up and (well) running since my lin+win setup times, and I don’t feel like learn a whole new way unless KDE+NFS works remarkably better in the situation as in topic.
Anyone here is using NFS in KDE 4(.4) ?
Would you please tell me if
opening a video file (in dragonplayer or kaffeine) from a NFS share: video starts immediately ? Or KDE tries to “download” it locally, in /tmp and only then the playback starts ?
dolphin goes crazy trying to create videos preview ?
If the answer is NO to both, then I have to move from samba to nfs.
thanks a lot to you all !
>
> Yes, if I copy the file locally it plays flawlessly.
>
> I also have to say that with gnome and WinXP everything works fine, as
> expected.
>
> So I think this is a problem within KDE.
> Now I’d love to know if this issue is just with KDE+SAMBA … or if
> this happens also with KDE+NFS.
>
>
chareos;
NFS has nothing to do with KDE or with whatever DE. NFS is older that any DE.
NFS is about remote mounting and then mimicing an file system. After it is mounted it is like any other mounted fs. As a normal user when you travel the directory tree of your system you are not aware of the fact that somewhere going to a subdirectory you go to another file system being it a local or remote (NFS) mount.
E.g. you can have a mount at /home/myself/Music/Most_loved_music/. You can go there and play or delete or everything you can do with every file on the system as long as the access bits allow you. The only thing is that when the mount is an NFS mount and the network is to slow, playing may give hicups.
hcw,
you mean Dolphin has no way to access an NFS share without a manual/fstab mount ?
Because, if it’s possible, my question stands still.
I’m asking 'cause I think there’s a problem in kio_smb , which is related to KDE
While I’ll try later if manual mount solves the problem (and it could, since that way KDE wouldn’t use kio_smb) I really prefer to access a share via dolphin (which calls in kio_smb for samba; whatever it is for nfs)
So here’s my question:
someone using KDE 4(.4) + NFS ?
Can try to access a NFS share trough Dolphin ?
Play a video file 400-500 MB?
Works fine as should/in local, starting within 2-3 seconds from when the video player has done launching ?
I do not know what you think Dolphin is. It is just a program that mimics in a nice GUI things we have done for years in the CLI with statments like* cd, ls, rm, cp, mv, …*
And as every program it can acess every directory/file that is available on the system. And in every Unix/Linux directories/files are made available on the system by mounting devices on directories allready available in the system. This starts by mounting the so called root file system on / (there isn’t much more in the beginning). and then you may have e.g. access to /home, where you can mount another filesystem and so on.
All and everything must be mounted somewhere in the one big directory tree before it can be opened by any program.
And all that mounting is not done by programs, it is done by the kernel on request from programs/processes doing the appropriate system call. And to increase security, those system calls may only be done by programs running with user 0 (root) as the process owner. Most simple example is when root executes the* mount* tool.
At boot this mounting is done for entries sitting in /etc/fstab.
Once the system is running, there are some deamons (background programs running all the time the system is up and running) that check for hardware connections and that then talk to others to (among other things) create device special files (those things in /dev) and either mount or talk to user applications (like the KDE device notifier) to ask what to do.
In short: Dolphin can not access inside anything that is not mounted. mounting is done:
. at boot from /etc/fstab entries;
. dynamicaly using udevd / HAL )or its replacing products);
. and of course root can do this ‘manualy’.
While I understand and appreciate your answers and will to help me… I think we are missing the point.
I know and understand a good part of what you wrote above.
I suspect there’s a problem the way KDE uses to “dinamically” mount a samba share. Incidentally, I’m doing this within Dolphin (that’s why I name it in my questions).
Still, it’s not of use to me to know what dolphin does or not.
Call it a Kio_smb issue… I just want to know if kio_nfs or whatever it is to access NFS share behaves in the same, bad way I notice in kio_smb.
So, while I thank you all for setting up this good troubleshooting,
I’ll take this as a “no, I don’t have KDE+NFS to test”.
I’ll try this for myself.
Which means invest half of my weekend to setup a NFS share I may even not use due to the same problem !
While the best way to help me out was
answering my question (admitting anyone is using NFS and KDE here):
Can try to access a NFS share trough Dolphin ?
Play a video file 400-500 MB?
Works fine as should/in local, starting within 2-3 seconds from when the video player has done launching ?
With an answer to this, I’d be able to decide IF move to NFS. I’d be able to go back to the opened kio_smb bug and report that it’s not a generalized KDE issue, but very specific to samba.
Oh, well.
Still, thank you all trying to set up a troubleshooting ground for me.
I use NFS to export part of one openSUSE system (let us call it ‘mine’) to another openSUSE system in the house (let us call it ‘hers’. This functions, regardless of level of openSUSE (or other Linux distribution), usage of any DE or its level or not. The user on the other system never ‘knows’ she is accessing disk on ‘my’ system.
I have the import/mount definition in /etc/fstab. If her system boots when mine is down, the mounting fails obviously. I therefore have an entry in the crontab of root on her system that runs every 5 mins, checks if the FS is mounted and when not tries it.
I can not inform you not about any SAMBA issues because I do not have any MS systems. But my advice would be not to use SAMBA when there are no MS systems involved. SAMBA is only to try to interface to MS systems (disks and printers) as good as possible. Use native tools (NFS, CUPS) for these tasks in a pure Unix/Linux environment.
Maybe if you turn off video preview in dolphin you might get better speed out of the transfer. I found that enabling preview’s of anything remote Dolphin goes nuts while it tries to cache the data locally.
Give it a try and see if it works any better… I have no problems with samba playback from my NAS box using samba…