Easy mounting for network drives

Registered by Miguel Duarte

I started using Ubuntu very recently, and there was one thing that was very hard to me. Really frustrating, as in Windows is just click and go. I've all my documents in a network drive which uses Samba and I wanted to access it through the software in Ubuntu. But some software seems to me that is only able to access documents on the computer (or that are mounted and as such, look local).

I easily discovered that you can "mount" with just a few clicks a samba drive in the network, but this "mount" is not exactly a mount, as the software that comes with Ubuntu doesn't recognize this types of "mounted" drives.

Then searching a lot, and loosing a lot of time, I've come to the conclusion that I've to edit manually a file to mount properly new network drives on my computer. And even as I achieved this, I don't know why, but currently I can read the drive, but I can't write to the drive. As I consider this such a basic thing, I really find it hard to believe that Ubuntu doesn't allow us to that in an easy way...

So, please, just create any easy way of mounting Samba network drives in other servers locally. Even because NAS drives are becoming something very common, and Apple also uses Samba on it's computers, this is a feature that will be more and more relevant. Not only geeks need to access network drives and share documents with Mac users. ;)

Blueprint information

Status:
Not started
Approver:
None
Priority:
Undefined
Drafter:
None
Direction:
Needs approval
Assignee:
None
Definition:
New
Series goal:
None
Implementation:
Unknown
Milestone target:
None

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I agree with the drafter; the ability to automatically or at least very simply mount network drives is necessary. For example, under Ubuntu 7.04, when I'm using Yahoo mail and want to browse to an attachment on my network drive, I can't go there unless I have special knowledge on how to set it up. I don't have that knowledge, so I can't perform that action. Navigating to a network drive is a basic computing function. It should be simple, as it is in Windows. Please make this part of the new Ubuntu! Thank you.
- Tjoel99

Applications have to be gnome-vfs (virtual file system) aware to use the 'easy' mounting option. Programs in Ubuntu main which dont let you use it should have a bug filed.
- kgoetz.

This is a showstopper for beginners. it took me 2 weeks and multiple forum posts to do what other OSs do with one click. Many backup programs do not allow the path to a network share. Meaning no backups to the network.
-Ianp5a

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