Stream sftp videos from dolphin

Help
1

Hi there !

I set up dolphin to browse files on an sftp server, and it works great !

The thing is that I would like to stream videos with mpv (by double clicking on them).
This only works if I set “username:password@domain…” in the url bar (I can’t set it in the sftp config in dolphin, or the password simply gets removed).

So when I explicitly set the password in the url, it works, but when restarting dolphin, I’m prompted for a password, I can browse the files, open small files (images, documents), but can’t stream videos with mpv (nothing happens, mpv doesn’t open itself).

Any help would be greatly appreciated !

2

It is a bug, or rather an implementation limitation.

The password should be written and read from KDE secrets manager, KWallet, but it seems this isn’t connected or not completely working.

I am guessing you are using kio-fuse.

3

Thanks for your answer !

I didn’t setup anything specific, I just added an entry in my bookmarks with sftp://…

Should I install kwallet and set it up ?

4

Not sure how, since it would be expected to be integrated automatically, that’s the bug.

You may already be using kwallet, for wifi passwords for instance.

5

I don’t use kde (I use bspwm), so that’s maybe why ?

6

I don’t use kde (I use bspwm), so that’s maybe why ?

I am not sure, but installing kwallet, launching it (open a wallet) and retrying is worse a try.

This should not be Plasma dependent.

7

I just checked and kwallet is already installed on my system.
Is there a way I could check what secrets storage dolphin uses ?

8

kwalletmanager should show you everything you need. If you have never set a password for it, or if you have and don’t know it, you will need to set one.

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9

The sftp password is indeed displayed in kwalletmanager.
Is there anything I can do to make video streaming working on my end ? Or is it something that has to be fixed/implemented in the code ?

10

I don’t know enough about streaming to know if it is even supported across a FTP connection. I doubt it is. Http can do it, but that is a different protocol.

11

What app are you opening the file in? In this context, is mpv a GUI app or the command-line program? Does it have a built-in SFTP server?

12

Would one need an application running on both ends of the sftp link? Or is is possible to do it all from the client end?

13

It depends. There are two ways to make streaming work on Dolphin:

  1. If the app has its own built-in smb/sftp/fts/nfs etc client, then you can make it work by entering network credentials for your mount in the app’s own network client configuration UI. Off the top of my head, VLC does this.
  2. If you install kio-fuse, then streaming will work to arbitrary apps, with the following limitations:
    – If the app has its own smb/sftp/fts/nfs etc network client, that needs to be disabled, or else the app will try to use it, fail, and not let kio-fuse its its own streaming capability.
    – At the moment `kio-fuse supports SMB network locations for streaming, and also a few others, but I can’t remember which ones aren’t supported right now. It’s possible SFTP is one of them. But it can’t hurt to try!
14

Would one need an application running on both ends of the sftp link? Or is is possible to do it all from the client end?

I run mpv only on the client side, by double-clicking on the video in dolphin.

And thanks @ngraham, I’ll give those options a try !

15

I installed kio-fuse and streaming sftp videos with mpv now works ! and I also didn’t have to setup anything after the installation, amazing !

Thanks a lot !

Also, this works : mpv "sftp://user:password@domain/path/to/file.extension but not very practical

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16

Great!

Maybe we should make kio-fuse a mandatory dependency for Dolphin so it has to be included when Dolphin gets installed.

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