[upstream] gvfs-fuse: does not support ftruncate size == current size

[Anders Wallenquist]

Binary package hint: gvfs

Using a fileserver exporting directories with ssh and OpenOffice stopped working after upgrade to 8.04 in the clients.
Clients mounting the share with the new gvfs-sftp-system. Instead of opening or saveing files OpenOffice starts a password dialog. The key-ring-system are a suspect also.

Using the dot-mount in home-directory or copying files thru nautilus to local directories are a work-a-round.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

thank you for your bug report, could you describe what you are doing exactly and what issue you get?

[alfred_nutile (alfred-rivervalleytechcollective)]

Same here in the problem world.
Nautilus can mount/use an sftp connection, kate, gedit etc all use it fine.
But the moment I open a file in OpenOffice from this sftp location Open Office asks me for username and password which NEVER works.
The 2nd time it comes back asking again but this time the username (hardcoded can not type it) is empty.
I think this has not worked since Fiesty?
I was hoping Hardy and the new files system would help but same problem.
Thanks,

[Anders Wallenquist (aw)]

Sebastien Bacher: We use an Ubuntu-server and ssh/sftp as a fileserver. Accessing (open and save) files thru the Gnome VFS-system works fine with "real" Gnome applications, but not with OpenOffice. (When OpenOffice tries to open or save files it starts a password dialogue which seems not to be connected with any Gnome underlying system, not the keyring system nor the Gnome open dialogue / ssh password dialogue. Trying to give userid and password does not do any good) This is an issue that is (for us) new after upgrade to Ubuntu 8.04 on the client side. On server-side we still have Ubuntu 6.06 and Ubuntu 7.10.

Alfred_nutile: we have this configuration working at us and several customers using 7.04 and 7.10, but have had some problems in 7.10 with some client-computers that we upgraded from 7.04, after a reinstall it started working as it should.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

seems to be an openoffice issue

[alfred_nutile (alfred-rivervalleytechcollective)]

So this is a clean install of Hardy.
Does that help?

[Anders Wallenquist (aw)]

Its the same on upgrades from 7.10, clean install 8.04, 32-bit and 64-bit version of 8.04.

[Anders Wallenquist (aw)]

Why is this low? Its a showstopper for Ubuntu-installations that uses an Ubuntu-server instead of Microsoft-servers and VPN. Using gvfs are a competetive solution if we could rely on it.

[alfred_nutile (alfred-rivervalleytechcollective)]

I agree about "Why is this low" basically my main selling point to remote office, etc is gone.
I have to now show people things like Freenx or setup vpn so people can work off site easily.
Where as before I was able to say ssh (secure one port) and you have remote access. Now ssh and ftp are useless to work from with Openoffice and Nautilus.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the low setting is on the gvfs task which is likely not valid anyway since that seems to be an openoffice issue, the bug doesn't have a clear description and easy steps to trigger the issue and the openoffice maintainer didn't look at the issue yet but the openoffice task settings will be change when he will look at the issue

[Anders Wallenquist (aw)]

This is how the problem are triggered:

Context: Standard Ubuntu 8.04 (with Gnome) installed on the Client (with OpenOffice and ubuntu-desktop installed), Ubuntu 6.06 or greater installed in the server with openssh-server installed

1) On the client, connect a directory to the client from the server using the Places-menu-system
2) Drag and drop some OpenOffice-documents and ascii-text-documents to the mounted share on the server
3) Fire up OpenOffice and Gedit
4) Using the Gnome Open dialogue: try to open, change and save one of the text-documents using gedit
5) Using the Gnome Open dialogue: try to open, change and save one of the openoffice-documents using openoffice

On every machine I have tested this, step 5 stopped due to an extra password dialogue

I don't know if this is a bug in gvfs-sftp, the Gnome-keyring-system, the OpenOffice-gnome-addition or else (fat fingers).

But I know gvfs-sftp is new in Ubuntu 8.04 and this configuration worked like charm from 6.06 to 7.04 and with a few gliches in 7.10 (reinstall helped) .

If the new gvfs-sftp require changes that is not done in the OpenOffice-Gnome-addition, or if its ment that the api used in OpenOffice-gnome-addition could stay untouched and the bug are located to gvfs or the keyring are a question which I don't have much to add.

[Anders Wallenquist (aw)]

"alfred_nutile: I have to now show people things like Freenx or setup vpn so people can work off site easily.
Where as before I was able to say ssh (secure one port) and you have remote access. Now ssh and ftp are useless to work from with Openoffice and Nautilus."

Exactly, we use ssh for almost everything, for local access and remote. We are targeting SME with not so many users, less than a hundred client computers on a local network. Using ssh for everything makes a transparent computer environment, users does not have to have in mind if the network is airbourne, if they work on a LAN, to a branch-office, from home or mobile.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

> On every machine I have tested this, step 5 stopped due to an extra password dialogue

that doesn't really seems to be a bug, openoffice is not a GNOME specific application and they decided to let the user enter his password rather than to rely on the gnome-keyring, that is a little annoyance but should not block any user

[alfred_nutile (alfred-rivervalleytechcollective)]

You may be correct that this is openoffice since it happens in all distros of late that I tried.
But, and I know these things do not make for exciting reading, if you read all the entries this is not an "inconvenience" but a bug since it not only asks you but DOES NOT WORK. It errors out comes back with no user name no where to type a name and just does not work.
?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

I'm working on GNOME and not openoffice so I can't speak for the openoffice maintainer but the user, password prompt works correctly on my hardy installation, agreed that somebody should look at the issue though, I'll try to get the openoffice maintainer to look at the bug

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

I think this may be fixed in the hardy-proposed debs. At least I can no longer reproduce the problem. It does ask for a password but then can open and save files. Please try this version and let me know if it resolves the problem for you.

Thanks!

Chris Cheney

[alfred_nutile (alfred-rivervalleytechcollective)]

I am more then happy to verify. Where would I get hardy-proposed debs?
Thanks
Al

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

Confirmed this actually is a bug. If you try to connect to an sftp that is the same user/id on another machine it works, but if the user/id doesn't match it has problems and does not work. It just happened to work for me before since I was connecting to another machine where my username and userid matched the current machine.

Chris

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

This looks like it will be fixed for OOo 3.0

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

that's an openoffice issue and not a gvfs one

[alfred_nutile (alfred-rivervalleytechcollective)]

I tried it on Suse 10.x (latest), just curious, and that same problem.
So if it is an OpenOffice then do we wait till Sept 2008 or do we post this issue here or should we post it there (oo site)?
Thanks

[kapetanski (klangwerkstadt)]

I have the same problem as well, cannot open documents due to the extra password dialogue. Did a fresh install of Ubuntu 8.04 just to be able to work remotely on my files, used Freenx before but the performance was not enough for moving pictures in the documents.

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

Reopening this bug, it happens even when attempting to save to a gvfs-fuse sftp mount.

I think it might be related to this unfixed bug: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=531598

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

It seems there is a bug where OOo can't save the first time to a gvfs-fuse fs but it works the second time it is attempted. I have already attached the strace to the upstream bug.

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

The issue is that gvfs does not support ftruncate for sizes other than 0. There is potential to support truncation but no backends (including smb) have code written to support it.

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

Upstream has committed a fix for ftruncate of a file to the current size of the file to be a NOP, which appears to fix the problem with OOo saving to ~/.gvfs/path/ However there are other problems with gnome-vfs support in Ubuntu when it is fully enabled (using the api and not fuse) which I still need to look into.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package gvfs - 1.1.8-0ubuntu1

---------------
gvfs (1.1.8-0ubuntu1) jaunty; urgency=low

  * New upstream version:
    - Fix crashers and leaks (lp: #201519)
    - Handle file:// uris with anchors in gvfs-open
    - fuse: Support ftruncate to the current file size (lp: #234532)
    - escape/unescape hostname part in uris, allowing spaces in e.g. smb domains
    - hal: Fix "No mount object" error on mount
    - Change details of the new .xdg-volume-info file format
    - Fix races in cancellation of gvfs streams
    - Remove debug spew from backends
    - ftp: Fix anonymous login (lp: #334540)
    - gphoto2: Ignore broken storages with no capacity (lp: #326029)
    - Don't globally modify COMP_WORDBREAKS in bash completion script
      (lp: #290784)
    - Don't ask for username when getting ssh key passphrase
  * debian/patches/91_upstream_change_fix_trash_crasher.patch:
    - the change is in the new version

 -- Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:02:47 +0100

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

This is fixed with openoffice.org 1:3.0.1-5ubuntu1 which is in Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty)