[Solved] Can't find network hard drive on local network

[jimg]

I have a network hard drive attached to my router and I'm able to discover it through Thunar and Nautilus on a Pop!_OS laptop (an Ubuntu derivative). However, my Mageia 9 laptop will not discover it, nor can I find a way that it can access the drive even if I know the exact name and protocol (e.g., ftp://networkspace2).

Does anyone have any ideas what could be missing? Thanks in advance!

-Jim Garrett

[doktor5000]

Hi there, is ftp the actual protocol for that particular question or was that just an example?
Because shares are usually either CIFS or NFS, ftp is rather rare as a network share these days.

One guess could be either a configuration issue with gvfs which is used for this sort of stuff.
Is there any difference in name resolution and firewall between Pop!_OS and Mageia for that matter, or can you resolve IP/name just fine and also reach the box hosting that share via port 20/21 ?

[jimg]

I set up the network drive (Lacie) more than 10 years ago, possibly up to 20, and I don't remember a lot of details. Something that's no longer common would not be impossible.

I've always used GUI tools to access it, so I'm not sure how to get the information your requesting. But if you give me some direction, I'll be happy to open a terminal.

gvfs and various related packages are installed on both systems.

Here's specifically what I see: from Nautilus (on the Pop!_OS system), I click on "Other locations" and it shows me these entries, presumably using different protocols:
- "Networkspace2 (File Sharing)"
- "Networkspace2 (ftp)"
- "Networkspace2 (Remote Login)"
- "Networkspace2 (File Sharing)"
- "Windows Network" (I think this one is always presented by Nautilus and doesn't indicate the presence of a network share, but I'm not sure)

ftp was the first one I tried that allowed me to log in. And I recall that years ago I would enter "ftp://networkshare2" in the location bar to get access.

[doktor5000]

On your Mageia box, please open a terminal and post the output of

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getent hosts Networkspace2
getent hosts networkspace2

[jimg]

Thanks for your responses.

Both of these return nothing; carriage return, nothing else:

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$ getent hosts Networkspace2
$ getent hosts networkspace2
$ getent hosts NetworkSpace2
$


I also tried these as root, and got the same behavior.

I also tried these on the Pop!_OS system and verified that Nautilus was able to see the shares, and these commands on that system yielded the same.

I'm happy to try the next thing.

[doktor5000]

Please post the output of

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grep hosts /etc/nsswitch.conf
avahi-browse --all --ignore-local --resolve --terminate

from both boxes. Also check your firewall on the Plop box what ports are open, especially if 5353 is accepted/forwarded.

You may also want to check if gvfsd sees the shares on the Plop box and what it says about them, then compare this to Mageia.
Something like this as root could work:

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GVFS_DEBUG=1 $(find /usr/lib* -name gvfsd 2>/dev/null) --replace 2>&1 | tee gvfsd.log

You might even get some information if you directly query the FTP share (in the command jimg would be your remote username) but I suppose that won't work as regular name resolution is not possible:

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gio info ftp://jimg@Networkspace2

[jimg]

I'll post two entries, one from my Mageia machine and the other from the Pop!_OS one. This one is from Mageia.

First, though, some new information: I dug up a user manual and was able to log into the administration module for the hard drive. It offers the ftp and sftp protocols, as well as "multimedia," and the current configuration has the hard drive offering all. With nmap and a little guessing I was able to find the hard drive. With FileZilla, if I provide the hard drive's IP address, I can access it on the Mageia machine. It's using port 22. But it's still not being discovered easily.

Here's the information you requested (on the Mageia machine):

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$ grep hosts /etc/nsswitch.conf
hosts:      mdns4_minimal files nis dns mdns4 myhostname


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$ avahi-browse --all --ignore-local --resolve --terminate
$


(I.e., this returned nothing.)

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$ GVFS_DEBUG=1 $(find /usr/lib* -name gvfsd 2>/dev/null) --replace 2>&1 | tee gvfsd.log
Failed to connect to the D-BUS daemon: The connection is closed (g-io-error-quark, 18)


Regarding ports open and port forwarding, through looking through the administration panel there's an unclicked box for port forwarding, so I would infer there's no port forwarding. I don't see any indication there of what ports are open.

Shortly I'll move over to the Pop!_OS machine and report results from there.

[jimg]

Now from the Pop!_OS machine:

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hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns myhostname


The next command yields quite a lot, and I include only the portions pertinent to the NetworkSpace2 hard drive.

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$ avahi-browse --all --ignore-local --resolve --terminate
+ wlp0s20f3 IPv4 NetworkSpace2                                 Web Site             local
+ wlp0s20f3 IPv4 NetworkSpace2                                 _edcp._udp           local
+ wlp0s20f3 IPv4 NetworkSpace2                                 Apple File Sharing   local
+ wlp0s20f3 IPv4 NetworkSpace2                                 Microsoft Windows Network local
+ wlp0s20f3 IPv4 NetworkSpace2                                 SFTP File Transfer   local
+ wlp0s20f3 IPv4 NetworkSpace2                                 Device Info          local
+ wlp0s20f3 IPv4 NetworkSpace2                                 iTunes Audio Access  local
+ wlp0s20f3 IPv4 NetworkSpace2                                 FTP File Transfer    local
+ wlp0s20f3 IPv4 NetworkSpace2 (Time Machine)                  Apple TimeMachine    local
+ wlp0s20f3 IPv4 NetworkSpace2 [00:d0:4b:93:88:ba]             Workstation          local
= wlp0s20f3 IPv4 NetworkSpace2                                 Web Site             local
   hostname = [NetworkSpace2.local]
   address = [192.168.1.18]
   port = [80]
   txt = ["path=/dashboard"]
= wlp0s20f3 IPv4 NetworkSpace2 [00:d0:4b:93:88:ba]             Workstation          local
   hostname = [NetworkSpace2.local]
   address = [192.168.1.18]
   port = [9]
   txt = []
= wlp0s20f3 IPv4 NetworkSpace2 (Time Machine)                  Apple TimeMachine    local
   hostname = [NetworkSpace2.local]
   address = [192.168.1.18]
   port = [548]
   txt = ["sys=waMA=00:D0:4B:93:88:BA" "dk1=adVN=liana,adVF=0xa1,adVU=8af9515f95284f02845664525ff76abd" "dk0=adVN=betsy,adVF=0xa1,adVU=8af9515f95284f02845664525ff76abd" "dk3=adVN=MyShare,adVF=0xa1,adVU=8af9515f95284f02845664525ff76abd" "dk2=adVN=OpenShare,adVF=0xa1,adVU=8af9515f95284f02845664525ff76abd" "dk5=adVN=jim,adVF=0xa1,adVU=8af9515f95284f02845664525ff76abd" "dk4=adVN=frances,adVF=0xa1,adVU=8af9515f95284f02845664525ff76abd"]
= wlp0s20f3 IPv4 NetworkSpace2                                 FTP File Transfer    local
   hostname = [NetworkSpace2.local]
   address = [192.168.1.18]
   port = [21]
   txt = []
= wlp0s20f3 IPv4 NetworkSpace2                                 iTunes Audio Access  local
   hostname = [NetworkSpace2.local]
   address = [192.168.1.18]
   port = [3689]
   txt = ["Machine ID=00D04B9388BA" "Password=false" "txtvers=1" "Version=196610" "Machine Name=NetworkSpace2" "iTSh Version=196609"]
= wlp0s20f3 IPv4 NetworkSpace2                                 Device Info          local
   hostname = [NetworkSpace2.local]
   address = [192.168.1.18]
   port = [0]
   txt = ["model=networkspace2"]
= wlp0s20f3 IPv4 NetworkSpace2                                 SFTP File Transfer   local
   hostname = [NetworkSpace2.local]
   address = [192.168.1.18]
   port = [22]
   txt = []
= wlp0s20f3 IPv4 NetworkSpace2                                 Microsoft Windows Network local
   hostname = [NetworkSpace2.local]
   address = [192.168.1.18]
   port = [445]
   txt = []
= wlp0s20f3 IPv4 NetworkSpace2                                 Apple File Sharing   local
   hostname = [NetworkSpace2.local]
   address = [192.168.1.18]
   port = [548]
   txt = []
= wlp0s20f3 IPv4 NetworkSpace2                                 _edcp._udp           local
   hostname = [NetworkSpace2.local]
   address = [192.168.1.18]
   port = [4446]
   txt = ["PRODUCTID=networkspace2" "HWREV=2.0" "DHCP=true" "IP=192.168.1.18" "DNS=192.168.1.1" "VERSION=2.2.8" "MAC=00:D0:4B:93:88:BA" "HWID=netspace_lite_v2" "PUID=00:D0:4B:93:88:BA" "MASK=255.255.255.0" "WINS=0.0.0.0" "NAME=Network Space 2" "GTWY=192.168.1.1"]


[doktor5000]

Now from the Pop!_OS machine:


hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns myhostname


The next command yields quite a lot, and I include only the portions pertinent to the NetworkSpace2 hard drive.

mdns4_minimal means zeroconf and is implemented by nss_mdns in Avahi, have a look at https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Avahi
It enables services / device discovery for your local network.

edit: "Network Services autodiscovery (zeroconf)" needs to be enabled in the Mageia firewall for this to work. https://doc.mageia.org/mcc/9/en/content ... akfirewall
Have a look at this thread: https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4768

[jimg]

Ah! Enabling network discovery in the firewall led to the behavior I was hoping for. Thanks!

Just to document for others like me who are not experienced with this: I opened MCC > Security. In both "Set up your personal firewall" and "Set up your personal IPv6 firewall" I clicked the box next to "Network services autodiscovery (zeroconf and slp)". Since this laptop isn't running any other servers (to be used by other machines), I clicked no other boxes.

Then when I open Thunar and click on "Browse network" I get entries from the network hard drive, and similarly for Nautilus. When I open an entry, I am given a login dialog, as expected. I'll mark this as "resolved".

[doktor5000]

For completeness sake, this happens because Pop!_OS does not seem to have a firewall by default.
It might happen with any distro which has a firewall enabled by default.