Libreoffice on Linux does not see network shares

[John_King]

LO 4.2 and 4.3 series on Opensuse 13.1 and Xubuntu 12.04

I am presently attempting to move some users from XP to Linux on our peer-to-peer network, but have hit a problem with Libreoffice and access to files on other networked machines.

When using LO on Windows XP, the file-open dialogue shows a 'Network places' icon and users can access files on other machines without a problem. I am trying to ensure that they get an equivalent experience when using LO on Linux.

However, the file-open dialogues of LO on the different Linux distributions I've tried do not show network shares on either Windows machines or Linux machines running Samba, and so users do not have the same experience that they have been used to on Windows XP. If I use the Kate text editor, which does provide a network icon in the file-open dialogue, there's no problem accessing files on the same shares.

I know that if we access the files on the network shares using dolphin/nautilus, then subsequently that network location appears in the LO file-open dialogue. However, I'd rather not require our users to do that before they can use the wordprocessing facilities; I simply want the same file-open dialogue on Linux LO that they had on Windows XP LO and MS Office.

Is this possible?

John King

[Tom_Davies1]

Hi
I am having the same problems on some machines (well, 1 Kubuntu machine)
but not on others (Ubuntu or Windows). There is an intermittent bug to do
with this so it would be great if you and i could do straces and add them
to the existing bug-reports.

As a temporary work-around i first set the Kubuntu machine to use Calligra
instead of LibreOffice. Now i'm trying to edit the;
/etc/samba/smb.conf
(after creating a copy/backup of it) on the server but so far i've not had
any luck with that. Other people tried different versions of LibreOffice.
What mystifies me is that on all the Ubuntu machines i double-click on any
file anywhere on the network or on a client/local desktop and LibreOffice
has no problems. Calligra does have nice features but i just don't like it
as much as LibreOffice. So i am kinda hoping the bug gets fixed or that i
stumble onto whatever the settings are that makes LO work on Ubuntu.

Sorry this hasn't helped much! Try searching the archives here too as
there were some good links posted last week on a thread i started.
Regards from
Tom

[James_Knott]

One thing I've noticed is the "Servers" drop down list (top right corner
of file open panel), where you can select Windows shares. I haven't
tried it, but that may do what you want.

[Franco1]

Hi,

this is a well known problem affecting some releases of LibreOffice (4.2.x) on some versions of *ubuntu.
You can see the files in the network shares but when you try to open them nothing happens.
Same result trying to open them in the application, browsing in the "open" windows to the share.
I personally verified this on Xubuntu 12.04 and Peppermint.

There are some workarounds, I tryed some of them without success , other are a little bit hard to implement for dummies.
You can do some googling for them.

What I done was to completely remove the 4.2.x release, replacing it with a safe 4.02.
Less functions, but it's working.

Bye,

     Franco

[Tom_Davies1]

Hi
I dunno why but i think i keep mis-reading the original question. Also i
think there are a few different issues in the question.

In all the distros i have tried you can "bookmark" folders, just as you can
bookmark web-pages in a web-browser. However it's much easier to get to
the bookmarked folders. In the file-browser you can have a side-panel
(it's usually the default) that shows "Places" and the bookmarked folders
appear in there.

I used to always switch that side-panel to show "tree" so that it was like
the "explorer" type view but normal users seemed to prefer the dumbed-down
"places" (in Windows) instead even though they then grumble that it gets in
the way and that it's a bit scary and confusing. In Gnu&Linux it seems to
show useful stuff in a way that does make more sense to normal users. So
nowadays i often keep the default "Places" view and just bookmark folders
(or un-bookmark them when they stop being useful).

When folders are files-shares on a remote machine, different desktop or
file-server or something then the bookmarks don't appear until after that
device has been mounted. So the next trick is to edit
/etc/fstab
(is that the right place for fstab?) to automatically mount such
file-shares at boot-up. Errr, that is the next thing i am working on for
our reception machine at work.

Regards from
Tom

[Mark_Stanton]

Same thing happens on Fedora (x86).
I don't think I've ever been able to access files from a Samba share.

Mark

[Tom_Davies1]

Hi
Can you edit the
/etc/samba/smb.conf
on the server?

If so does this advice look good? Does it need to be modified for
different servers?

http://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/show/2406-ubuntu-share-files-and-folders-with-other-computers

I've emailed my company's network guy but he has responded as quickly as he
normally does.
Regards from
Tom

[John_King]

James
Thanks for this. I'd not noticed this drop down list before as it only appears when 'Use Libreoffice dialogues' is selected in options, and I'd been using the default system dialogues.
This certainly makes it easier to set up persistent links to network shares in the File-Open dialogue, though the 'remember password' option doesn't work and the password has to be re-entered every time I access the share on a windows machine. I'll explore this further to see if it satisfies our needs.

John

[Tim_Lloyd]

really? I have accessed my samba shares with LO for approx 2 years. I swapped from x86 to x64 on F19 (middle of last year?) but no problems before then.

Cheers

[John_King]

Hi
I am having the same problems on some machines (well, 1 Kubuntu machine)
but not on others (Ubuntu or Windows). There is an intermittent bug to do
with this so it would be great if you and i could do straces and add them
to the existing bug-reports.

As a temporary work-around i first set the Kubuntu machine to use Calligra
instead of LibreOffice. Now i'm trying to edit the;
/etc/samba/smb.conf
(after creating a copy/backup of it) on the server but so far i've not had
any luck with that. Other people tried different versions of LibreOffice.
What mystifies me is that on all the Ubuntu machines i double-click on any
file anywhere on the network or on a client/local desktop and LibreOffice
has no problems. Calligra does have nice features but i just don't like it
as much as LibreOffice. So i am kinda hoping the bug gets fixed or that i
stumble onto whatever the settings are that makes LO work on Ubuntu.

Sorry this hasn't helped much! Try searching the archives here too as
there were some good links posted last week on a thread i started.
Regards from
Tom

Tom
I think you may have misunderstood my original question. Using a file manager such as nautilus or dolphin and browsing to the network, I can access any files on network windows shares, whether on Windows machines or on a samba server. Double-clicking on the files will open LO satisfactorily. The shares seem to get mounted by the very act of using the file manager. I realise from looking through the archives that some people have problems with this, but this is not my problem.

My problem is entirely within the linux version of LO and the File-Open dialogue. On the Windows version of LO (and MS Office for that matter), there is an icon on the file-open dialogue called either 'network neighbourhood' or 'my network places' that gives access to windows shares on windows or samba machines on the network. Users can simply click on this and follow the requisite path to access files on other machines. However, on the linux version of LO, this does not appear, so users cannot access any files on network shares. It seems that LO (unlike eg Kate on KDE) does not list any network places unless they have been mounted by another application; if I use dolphin or nautilus to establish contact to the network share and **then** use the LO File-Open dialogue, the share is listed. I don't know whether this is a bug in LO or a deliberate policy decision; whichever, it causes us problems and has prevented my switching the old XP machines to Linux.

I'm presently experimenting with the alternative file-open-save dialogues as suggested by James Knott to see if that gets us any further.

regards

John

[jbfaure]

Hi,

Hi,

this is a well known problem affecting some releases of LibreOffice
(4.2.x) on some versions of *ubuntu.
You can see the files in the network shares but when you try to open
them nothing happens.
Same result trying to open them in the application, browsing in the
"open" windows to the share.
I personally verified this on Xubuntu 12.04 and Peppermint.

I think the problem is Xubuntu. I had to install a Unity session on my
Xubuntu to have something really functionning.
Thunar (file manager of Xubuntu) in Xubuntu 12.04 was really bugged for
network connections. It works better in Xubuntu 14.04.

Best regards.
JBF

[Tom_Davies1]

Hi
It is not just Xubuntu. I have it on Kubuntu too. Franco mentioned having
it on Peppermint (another Ubuntu clone and so definitely in the Debian
family too).

Then Mark Stanton said Fedora had the same issue. I thought Fedora was
Redhat family but looking at DistroWatch it seems to be claiming to be
independent of the 4-8 main families.

Franco also said that going back to the 4.0.x branch seemed to fix the
problem for him. I've not tried that yet.

James Knott's answer about using the native-LO dialogues rather than the
default dialogues from the DE of whichever distro seems to be getting me
somewhere too.

However none of this is relevant to the o.p.s question.

It is more relevant to my thread of last week, which i still haven't worked
through! Can anyone having this problem please try to post straces and
such to the existing bug-reports? That might help the devs fix it more
quickly. LO version numbers and OS affected might also help.
Regards from
Tom

[Tom_Davies1]

Hi
Ok, so i think the problem is that the file-shares are not mounted on
boot-up.

Some programs will do the mounting for you but they shouldn't (imo). It's
just very handy that they do. LO is being over-strict in "doing the right
thing" and that is a bit of a pain, imo.

I just tried editing my fstab to add in the file-shares but haven't been
able to get back onto the reception machine to see if that did do the job
or not. I'll have to wait until it's quieter.
Regards from
Tom

<snip />

As a temporary work-around i first set the Kubuntu machine to use
Calligra instead of LibreOffice.

<snip />