Unfortunately the help of LibreOffice does not help about how to connect from Linux to a Samba server. Many people are using Samba servers for file shearing between Linux and Windows in the same network. This is because many companies are using together Linux and Windows desktop computers. But if one such user is trying to connect his Linux based LibreOffice to open/save a file on a Samba share, he/she can not found any useful help. Enough clear and practical suggestion how to achieve it is missing in the online or offline help system of LibreOffice. Please try to open File --> Open... --> Servers... You can found there around 16 connection options but no any about a Samba share. If one will try to use the option for Windows Share, the dialog will present him as host the following URL: https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v2 (!?!) It looks like our regular user willing to connect to his company intranet Samba server, will stop here and could not do noting more. If he/she clicks the Help button of the form it will be lost as could not found any useful intonation. This is because for this connection option there are given only 6 rows of information without any example or possible options how to use them. Also searching the Web does not give exact and practical explanation how one can connect LibreOffice to a Samba server via above Servers... button. Even it is not clear is it possible at all. My suggestion is to give in the help system more practical explanations with some examples about how to connect. Such explanations should be written so, to make it easy to connect for any LibreOffice users, not only for the IT hackers.
The report actually indicates 3 issues. 1) effectively a the https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v2 is not to be suggested as a Windows share. --> will open another bug 2)Documentation: The Help page exist actually: https://help.libreoffice.org/6.0/en-US/text/shared/guide/cmis-remote-files-setup.html The dialog Help button does not open the right help page, the issue is bug 115254. 3) If the contents of the help page above is not enough for Samba or Windows shares, can you append to this bug the text you would like to see? Thank you.
I've pretty much done writing up to now, and now I have to add a lot more text. Please excuse me for this long additional explanation, but I hope it will help to become clearer what I think about. My Idea is that help with minimum text about difficult or technical subjects can help to IT people only. But if LibreOffice need to be used by anyone, then such way of explanation does not work. After supporting many different users of LibreOffice, my personal filling is that many of them can read some help subject and after it could not understood any thing from it, so finally they can not solve their problem. This is especially where special or technical things are explained expecting users should know the technical things around the aspect and so should understand what to do even from few words. Unfortunately, especially for not technical people it does not work. My suggestion is to try to make the explanation text for the very technical or not very clear (straight forward) subjects more explanatory. To try to give info for some possible variants for the needed help solutions. Also if possible to include examples how practically in real life will be done the needed thing. For example instead to read "shared by Windows" it could be written "shared by Windows or Samba" For example if some non technical user would like to connect to a Samba server he/she may not realize that this will be the same as connecting to Windows share. So I believe some where in the help it need to be mentioned. Also if in the help suggestion may be given some kind of illustration with correctly adjusted forms to make connection work, then non technical people may help them self copying the given real life example, without to know what means for example "root", "shared resource", "host" etc... I do not feel my self as a good writer or enough creative person. I believe there are so many creative persons around LibreOffice who can do it much more better than my eventual suggestion text. Probably I could try to prepare some sample as far I could, but I do not feel my self as a good documentation or text writer.
Dear Olivier Hallot, This bug has been in ASSIGNED status for more than 3 months without any activity. Resetting it to NEW. Please assigned it back to yourself if you're still working on this.
Checked it again, this time with LibreOffice 6.2.2.2 Results: 1. Connection to a Samba server still is impossible for regular users 2. The Help system is sitll as useless as in past. 3. No any help word about Linux and Samba server. Just useless mentioning of common words with Windows in mind. 4. The help content is too basic without any example or screenshots to show how to connect. My feeling is there is zero improvement in the reported problems
repro in Version: 7.4.7.2 (x64) / LibreOffice Community Build ID: 723314e595e8007d3cf785c16538505a1c878ca5 CPU threads: 8; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19044; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win Locale: en-IN (en_IN); UI: en-US Calc: threaded other observations: a) unable to locate mention of smb or samba services among the list of servers supported by the CMIS protocol, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_Management_Interoperability_Services#CMIS_Servers b) repeat: the CMIS Help pages link provided in comment #1 does not have any mention of smb or samba in it. this might require confirmation / inputs from dev (or) design team. changing status to UNCONFIRMED since it is still unclear if LibreOffice inherently supports opening files over smb / samba connections.
The reason it is confusing IMO is because historically, SMB shares were set up by the network administrator or sysadmin, and would be available transparently in the file system. The whole LO access to a file share dialog thing just came along and added to the confusion, and shouldn't really even be necessary. This was how it used to work. Why it was decided that we needed a separate internal dialog for Windows shares and SMB/CMIS is somewhat unclear to me. As someone who previously used OpenOffice.org 1/2 against a Samba server running on a Redhat Linux server in a business environment LAN, the system worked, but had its quirks (like occasionally writing 0 byte files from time to time). This was wayyyyy before LibreOffice ever existed, nearly 20 years ago. My point is that the dialog added a level of complexity that was in fact never needed.
In response to comment 6, I would say that the approach where we just keep doing things the way we've done it in the past is not a good approach. We must adapt quickly and qualitatively to the coming changes. Samba servers in many places are now ubiquitous. There are entire countries that refuse to use or are financially unable to use Microsoft, and their entire government machine goes to Linux. That is where LibreOffice has the greatest chance for growth and development. But there file servers everywhere are Samba servers. Almost everywhere there are already societies that seek to share data through such servers and do not have available system administrators. For example, educational institutions, scientific groups, various types of clubs, museums, public libraries, etc. ... There, the user opens his laptop, connects to the network (if he can), accesses the file servers, which in most cases are Samba (if he can) and runs whatever he needs. If he can't, he either looks for other software tools to get the job done, or is left without access and can't do what he planned. This is the perfect place for free solutions and most such users try to do it themselves. Mandatory system administrators only exist in the corporate world. That is, it is precisely for this type of user that LibreOffice documentation is needed so that they can handle it themselves. And LibreOffice must give them such an opportunity if it wants not to lose them as its customers. If we continue to pretend that there is only Windows and various other proprietary solutions in this world and expect to rely only on sysadmins, then we are missing the train and will only watch it go into the future without our input.
(In reply to kivi from comment #7) > Almost everywhere there are already societies that seek to share data > through such servers and do not have available system administrators. For > example, educational institutions, scientific groups, various types of > clubs, museums, public libraries, etc. ... There, the user opens his laptop, > connects to the network (if he can), accesses the file servers, which in > most cases are Samba (if he can) and runs whatever he needs. If he can't, he > either looks for other software tools to get the job done, or is left > without access and can't do what he planned. If the user can't even access the network then having instructions in the LibreOffice help on how to connect to a samba server are not going to be of any use. > This is the perfect place for > free solutions and most such users try to do it themselves. Trying to do it themselves means being able to administer a network share system, which is independent from anything related to LibreOffice. It also requires a skillset beyond what a casual user would be expected to know. A casual user can learn from the already ample documentation pertaining to Samba how to do this independently of anything LibreOffice has to offer. > Mandatory system > administrators only exist in the corporate world. That is, it is precisely > for this type of user that LibreOffice documentation is needed so that they > can handle it themselves. The point is, Samba is a server-based protocol. It is independent of LibreOffice, it does not rely on LibreOffice to be configured and set up. Anyone that wishes to set up a Samba server must familiarise themselves with the Samba documentation. A properly configured Samba server will have shares that are accessible to a Libreoffice user through the file system. > And LibreOffice must give them such an opportunity > if it wants not to lose them as its customers. If we continue to pretend > that there is only Windows and various other proprietary solutions in this > world and expect to rely only on sysadmins, then we are missing the train > and will only watch it go into the future without our input. I disagree, but obviously this is my own personal opinion. I don't see the cause and effect you claim between not having Samba configuration documentation within LO and the loss of customers (which customers that might be, remains unclear to me, btw). It isn't about believing that Windows is the only system out there, the default on macOS, for example, for file shares is now Samba/CMIS. On Ubuntu, the option to share a folder from one's personal account with other users is a Samba option built into the file system. It is about understanding what the software is designed for. LibreOffice can work with Samba shares, but that doesn't mean IMHO that it is our duty to explain within the LibreOffice help files how to configure a Samba share. I understand how having a few examples of connection strings might be helpful, but how would that be any different from any of the other existing documentation out there relating to SMB/CMIS ? In which scenario would it be required for a standard, unsophisticated user to configure a Samba share from within LO ? IMO, that is not the role of an office suite. I guess that this is one of those requests that if someone is willing enough to put the work in, then they should be free to do that, but they should bare in mind the extra resources that will be required to translate, recompile the help, etc, that comes with that input for little perceived gain when other ample documentation already exists elsewhere.
I have been a certified Windows and Linux system administrator for many years. But lately I mostly deal with Linux cases where almost 100% of users use LibreOffice. And so I've seen a lot of problems with LibreOffice in real life, which is why I take the liberty of disagreeing with the last comment. Connecting to the network is not a big problem for ordinary users because they use DHCP and everything is automatic for them. It is a problem to then work directly with their files on the file server, as they are used to with Microsoft and Windows file servers. And they insist on doing it the same way and refuse to download the file locally, work with it and upload it back to the server. There are people who are convinced that they cannot work with the files on the server because it "is not a Microsoft File Server but some kind of Samba Server, for which nothing is written in the documentation". Then they demand that they be provided with Microsoft File Server + Microsoft Office so they can do their jobs. This wouldn't happen so often if, in the LibreOffice documentation, someone would add a dozen lines that explain things in a nutshell - how LibreOffice can and should work with Samba Server with one or two useful examples - concise but comprehensive so as not to we push users away, justifying that we save resources and cause unnecessary additional work on documentation.
(In reply to kivi from comment #9) > > This wouldn't happen so often if, in the LibreOffice documentation, someone > would add a dozen lines that explain things in a nutshell - how LibreOffice > can and should work with Samba Server with one or two useful examples - > concise but comprehensive so as not to we push users away, justifying that > we save resources and cause unnecessary additional work on documentation. Nobody is stopping you from writing those dozen lines explaining in a nutshell with one or two useful examples and submitting them to the help documentation system for inclusion, but you seem to be expecting someone else to do this for you. The whole point of the participative project that is LibreOffice, is that, even for non-developers who only want to write documentation, they can do so.
Setting to new, as this is confirmed but not resolved.