Access Network Shares

KDE Linux can access disks or “shares” on network servers that use any of the following protocols:

  • smb:// (Server Message Block/Samba/SMB)
  • nfs:// (Network File System/NFS)
  • ftp:// and sftp:// (File Transfer Protocol/FTP/SFTP)
  • webdav:// (WebDAV)

Don’t do this

Many guides on the internet recommend mounting network shares by creating permanent entries for them in the /etc/fstab file. This is not recommended; when the server becomes unavailable, the system can experience slow boot times, hanging applications, or even data loss.

Do this instead

If you already know the server’s address

This applies to all supported protocols.

  1. Launch the Dolphin file manager.
  2. Click “Network” in the sidebar.
  3. In the location field near the top of the window, type the address of the server. For example, to connect to a network share using the SMB protocol with the IP address “192.168.50.72”, type “smb://192.168.50.72”.
  4. Double-click the desired network share on the server.
  5. When prompted to authenticate, enter the credentials for accessing the network share.

If you know the server exists but don’t know its address

This only applies to servers using the smb:// protocol.

  1. Launch the Dolphin file manager.
  2. Click “Network” in the sidebar.
  3. Double-click “Shared Folders (SMB)”.
  4. Double-click the entry for the desired server.
  5. Double-click the desired network share on the server.
  6. When prompted to authenticate, enter the credentials for accessing the network share.

Bookmark the server for later use

To access the network share from other applications later, bookmark it:

  1. In Dolphin, right-click the icon for the network share, or the white background of the window after accessing it.
  2. Choose Add to Places.

The network share will then appear in the sidebar, inside the Remote group.

To access files on the network share from within an application, open the standard open/save dialog and click on the bookmarked entry for the network share, which appears in the sidebar there as well.

To change the bookmarked network share’s name or icon, right-click it, choose “Edit…”, and adjust things to your liking.

Known limitations

The instructions above work with almost all applications available in KDE Linux because they use the KDE-provided open/save dialogs, which show bookmarked network shares and know how to access them.

However, some older applications use their own open/save dialogs that don’t include your bookmarked network shares. Prominent examples include Audacity, Blender, GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), Inkscape, and LibreOffice. These applications require network shares to be mounted locally.

If you regularly use any of these applications with files on network shares, mounting the shares locally will provide the least painful experience.

To do it safely, use the advanced systemd automount feature, as detailed in this article.

Article contributed by under the CC-BY-4.0 license.