illiminable
commented
5 years ago Note that SMB support is now built into Chrome OS since Chrome 71. The fix for this bug in that implementation will be in Chrome 73. See crbug.com/913691
Since Chrome 71, SMB is now natively supported by Chrome OS and this Chrome extension/app is deprecated. The new implementation is an order magnitude or two faster and much more reliable.
On Chrome 71 or higher you can:
Open the files app Click the "three dot menu" in the top right Choose "Add New Service" Choose "SMB file share"
A dialog in settings will open (in 72 and later it's a standalone dialog). Enter your share information as before.
You can uninstall the chrome app as it will be deprecated in the near future.
If you have bugs with the new implementation you can open them at crbug.com under component "Platform>Apps>FileManager"
A fairly common scenario is having a laptop that moves to different networks and in some the file share does not exist (eg. home vs work).
Since at reboot the app tries to remount previous shares if you reboot at a location that the share doesn't exist you get errors.
We should distinguish interactive vs non-interactive mounting and in non-interactive cases don't show an error.
In order to do that however there are a few options;
1) Just silently unmount. This will be annoying when you go back to where the share exists, but maybe less so in the case you only have one share and we implement remembering info in the dialog.
2) Lie to the OS and say we mounted successfully. Keep a flag in the plugin so we know it's not really mounted. Then add checks on every operation and when an actual operation occurs mount at that time. An optional nice extra might be to add a simple unicode character hint at the start of the display name. An X ✗ or a crossed circle for example.
3) Make some changes on the ChromeOS side to allow a "deferred" state. This could possibly also include more elegant icon/visual cue.
I think we should attempt (2) for now anyway and maybe investigate 3. Since (2) also is similar to a use case with deferred credentials. ie. Admin can mount a share with path and user name but the user must enter a password on first access.