When opening files from network share, applications try to cache entire file locally

[Jason Ward]

Say you have a 80gb tar file.

Say this tar file is on a SAMBA share on the network.

Trying to open the tar using file-roller is something you will deeply regret.

1) file-roller VERY SLOWLY attempts to cache the entire file locally (I mean it takes it ages)
2) file-roller does not check that the local drive can store the file its copying

File-roller has no good reason to copy locally, and the practice is entirely counter productive, and in the case of multi-GB files can lead to

a) access to the samba share for other applications (say a media player) being overwhelmed and causing them to error
b) makes file-roller appear hung
c) leaves massive files in your local cache ("~/.cache/.fr-randomcharacters") and no way to clear them except manually
d) can cause your machine to run out of diskspace
e) is very very slow, copying the file locally, manually is many times faster and doesn't cause other applications to error (see a)
f) very bad user experience

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: file-roller 3.2.1-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-13.22-generic 3.0.6
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-13-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
Date: Tue Dec 13 10:37:10 2011
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/file-roller
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Release amd64 (20111012)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: file-roller
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.