SMB/NFS in Dolphin: auto-mount on network connection (feature request)

Brainstorm
1

I’m not really a technical person and going into config files just to mount a SMB or NFS share is not really user friendly. And then you still have the problem that it doesn’t mount on startup or when the network connects.

What makes it more confusing is that there’s already a UI in Dolphin that seems like it should connect to a SMB share,but it doesn’t reconnect on startup. You have to do it manually every time.

I’m used to the Windows experience where you set it up once and it just works.. connects on startup, reconnects when the network is available, no config fstab file needed.

I’d love to have that same experience in Dolphin. Just configure it once in a simple dialog and not have to bother with it again.

1 Like
2

If you have connected using the UI, you can right-click into the folder and add it to the sidebar.

3

I’m aware of that. The real problem is connecting to the remote shares in the first place. Having to configure them in the fstab file isn’t obvious or easy for beginners, and it really breaks the user experience.

4

You don’t need to edit the fstab. You can use the UI of Dolphin and use add it to places so you don’t need to create it every time.

5

That’s not really in dolphin scope, maybe in Plasma, but filesystem configuration has little interest from the community these days.
Filesystem definition is at the administrator level, very few GUI tools exist for this in Linux.

Dolphin and the KDE stack (kio) provide smb:// in part to alleviate this issue and many issue that mounting network filesystem imply and with kio-fuse application outside of KDE stack can still benefit from it.

This is still not 100% perfect, our software development reflects the community interest mostly and network filesystem does not have many users or developers supporting it.

If that’s not satisfying for you, you might to try autofs and refer to Samba - ArchWiki

Linux is not Windows it does not work the same way, doesn’t have the same support., KDE isn’t a billion dollar company.
KDE is a FOSS community that delivers software for free contributed mainly by volunteers and improved thanks to user feedback as additional QA to the QA done by its contributors.
Please consider aligning your expectations with that fact or at least framing your feedback in accord.

6

Thanks for the clarification.. I apologize, I do not understand how Linux handles this kind of thing and just assumed it was a Dolphin issue… I just thought implementing this in Dolphin would make the experience better, but I understand if it isn’t in the right place, also I really love KDE and the work you all do, so thanks for that too.

7

Once you add the bookmark, you can easily reconnect with one click. The credentials will be remembered if you checked that box on first connection.

Screenshot_20260325_174251
Screenshot_20260325_174251305×620 30.7 KB

8

I really think this should be something that Dolphin should handle. There should be an option or even better a prompt to where dolphin can basically automatically add those network shared to fstab. Yes there is the option to add these to bookmark section but this is only for managing files within Dolphin. The second I want to manage files with another application this becomes useless.

You may say that this isn’t a common use case but I would argue that just isn’t correct. NAS devices are becoming more and more common. I may have a very large library of movies or music on there that I would like to enable my application to see. I can see those files in Dolphin but because dolphin doesn’t actually mount those network shares they don’t work without actually mounting them in the filesystem. Another use case is utilizing a network share to host game files. This may be used for something like steam or retro emulation. Again these other applications can’t see the network share because dolphin only mounts the share in dolphin and doesn’t actually mount the network share in the file system.

You say that you just need to add the proper line in fstab. This really isn’t a great answer for new users. I myself have been using Linux for 12 years now and I still really struggle to get the syntax and permissions right when mounting network shares. It would really go a long way to adding polish to the platform if this is something that our file manager could just handle for the user in a graphical function.

I will say that it doesn’t even require modifying fstab if that isn’t the route that dolphin wants to go. Personally I think that would be better as it is a more permanent option but honestly you could just have it so that a service will run the mount command and temporarily mount the network locations every time you login. Again I prefer the permanent option but honestly there are options.