Problem in Linux (especially with Dolphin file explorer)

[Kalle]

Hello,
On W10/W11 i sued Free File Sync (FFS) to access "shared" folders from another PC in my home network. and the i "mirror" from my main PC as a backup. In windows I only need to open the network folder, enter (and save my credentials. and then I can access that folder from FFS (or drag/drop it).

In several Linux distributions i was able to install FFS. But there is no option to select a network folder, or to drag/drop them. Is this not possible,? Or am i missing something?

In these Linux distributions I was able to access the shared network folder with the respective file manager. i also saved my credentials. Is there an added step required?

In addition i came across some other problem I'm trying to nail down. in distros with Dolphin Field explorer (Debian 13 stable, Fedora 42), Dolphin crashes when accessing the network folder. But not initially before i install FFS. But as soon as i install FFS, Dolphin starts crashing when accessing network folders.

So far Ubuntu (not using Dolphin) was the only distro I tested that was able to access the files on the shared network drive after installing FFS. is anyone aware of such problems?

[John1234]

Hi,

What specific version of Linux are you using? And are you trying to synchronize to another Linux machine or to one of your Windows computers?

Linux is all about Mount points. You're probably going to need to mount the remote file system to a local folder in your home folder and then have free file sync point to that.

In Linux I usually use a utility program called rclone to mount Windows drives to a folder and then use free file sync that way.

You can also use Samba to mount a Windows Drive.

[Kalle]

Thanks for the response. i think the Samba situation should be fine since Dolphin shows the shared folder under the "SMB" folders (before it crashes, that is). But I didn't see mounted folders in the "Samba Status - info Center".

i found a few articles and posts about mounting, but all in terminal. and i don't really want to enter the whole path of the folder (nor do i know it - in Windows it is just there, and it also shows in Dolphin). if mounting is required, doesn't Dolphin already do that?

is this the program you talked about: https://rclone.org/commands/rclone_mount/
Is there nothing with a GUI that can just find the folder and mount it? And does that mounting have to be done every time I want to sync?

My current installation is Debian 13 KDE stable. i have tried (on live-session): Fedora 42 KDE, Min (Debian), Ubuntu, Bluefin, OpenSuse and probably another one i can't remember. Those are just the ones that actually could access the shared folder with their file explorer. and since none could make FreeFileSync find network folders, i also get the feeling I'm missing a step, like mounting.

[bgstack15]

Programs like Dolphin (in KDE Plasma) and Thunar (in XFCE) can use low-level filesystem libraries directly to access network shares like nfs or CIFS/SMB. For everything else though, you can mount the filesystem in question to a spot on your filesystem, so it then is accessible to anything that works with files. The command is named "mount" and takes some finagling.

For example, to mount your remote path \\homepc1\myshare you would need to run something similar to the following.

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/myshare
sudo mount -t cifs //homepc1/myshare /mnt/myshare


That is extremely basic, and does not demonstrate adding a user and password, or storing it in your computer startup process so it always mounts that. SMB normally protects the share and filesystem access with a username and password, as you have already mentioned. So to add those, you would run something like this.

sudo mount.cifs -o username=Kalle,password=InsecurePwGoesHere3 //homepc1/myshare /mnt/myshare


If that doesn't work, try adding quotes around the password value, because the shell (bash, fish, zsh, whatever) will try to interpret characters weird, like quotes, exclamations, etc. But also as you noticed, the password is in the command. You can choose to use a file that stores the credentials, whose contents look like the following.

username=Kalle
password=SlightlyBetterToPutthePwInAFile
domain=HOMEPC1


If you do not know what the domain is, then it's probably the hostname of the Windows machine. (Win+Pause to quickly pull up "About System" and it will show you the name). You might be able to get away with skipping the domain/workgroup, but I doubt it.
So with this credential file, which should NOT have a line ending character on the last line (that is, do not press enter at the end), you can run a command like the following.

sudo mount.cifs -o credentials=/path/to/that/cred/file //homepc1/myshare /mnt/myshare


Once you get the remote share mounted, you can visit it in the shell or Dolphin, etc., like any other directory around. And then FreeFileSync would be able to see it and operate against it.