[SOLVED] Unable to browse network

[geekosupremo]

Issue: When in Thundar (on XFCE - Debian 8.2) and I click the "Network" icon in the left sidebar the following message is displayed.

Failed to open "/ on". Specified location is not supported.

I configured eth0 according to the manual instructions for a static IP in /etc/network/interfaces on the Debian Wiki. I can use the terminal (stterm) to ping other computers on the network. I can SSH to other computers. I can apt-get update. I can surf the web (I'm posting from the affected machine). I have Samba installed.

Near as I can tell addressing the network, and seeing the windows devices should be fine.

[steve_v]

I may be barking up the wrong tree here, it's been a while since I used XFCE... do you have gvfs-backends installed? IIRC Thunar uses gvfs for 'virtual' (e.g. network) filesystems, and (again IIRC) the xfce-desktop task installs only gvfs, but not the gvfs-backends package.
Failing that, does samba/cifs browsing work with e.g. smbclient at a console?

[geekosupremo]

do you have gvfs-backends installed? IIRC Thunar uses gvfs for 'virtual' (e.g. network) filesystems, and (again IIRC) the xfce-desktop task installs only gvfs, but not the gvfs-backends package.

I did not before but I added them an now it seems to be working! Thanks so much!

[steve_v]

Excellent
For the benefit of others, recon you could add [SOLVED] to the topic title?

[geekosupremo]

For the benefit of others, recon you could add [SOLVED] to the topic title?

Done and done! I just wanted to try a few things to make sure that it was genuinely solved.

[doraimom]

I may be barking up the wrong tree here, it's been a while since I used XFCE... do you have gvfs-backends installed? IIRC Thunar uses gvfs for 'virtual' (e.g. network) filesystems, and (again IIRC) the xfce-desktop task installs only gvfs, but not the gvfs-backends package.
Failing that, does samba/cifs browsing work with e.g. smbclient at a console?

Debian 8 here, with XFCE.
Same problem using Thunar. smb:// doesn't work, and clicking on network browser inside it also displays error message.

Installing the missing package gvfs-backends solved the problem. It was the villain!

Thank you very much!

[braze]

--bingo-- !! its 'was' gvfs-backends

thanks,, ** worked for me too. was starting to get frustrated

[Dave B]

It Worked! Debian 8.9 / xfce (First desktop install for me; used to plain old text interface.)

[martabi]

Worked here too! Debian 9.5 / xfce

[aptinstalldebian]

Just created an account to say that this still works on Debian 10 Buster, as of 31 July 2020.

Just for SEO purposes, so others can find this: " how to connect to network from file manager smb:// local network 192.168.0 connect to NAS network-attached storage other computers on local wi-fi shared file systems "

[CwF]

works in bullseye too!