ssh connection should open the user directory by default

[Mikko Ohtamaa]

One can connect to SFTP server via creating SFTP bookmark in "Connect to server..." menu.

If the user gives only the server name and the username the bookmark takes the user to the server root when logged in.

SFTP should honour home folder setting and take user to the user's home folder if no folder is specified in the SFTP bookmark.

Reproduce

1. Chooce Connect to server...

2. Put in any server where you have FTP account

2. Login using bookmark

expected result:

You are in your remote folder

Actual result:

You are in server root / folder

(This holds true for FTP shares as well).

[arno_b (arno.b)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better.
This bug did not have a package associated with it, which is important for ensuring that it gets looked at by the proper developers. You can learn more about finding the right package at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage.
I have classified this bug as a bug in nautilus.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

thank you for your bug report, that's not really a bug though but how sftp is working

[Paul Natsuo Kishimoto (khaeru)]

Sebatien, I agree that SFTP or gvfs is not malfunctioning here, but I also think Mikko's result should be the actual behavior. Consider:

 * After using the "Connect to server" tool, a non-technical user clicks the bookmark in the Nautilus sidebar. He is confused to see folders like "usr" and "etc" instead of what he expects exists on the remote computer.
 * A technical user is experienced with SSH and used to finding herself in the home directory when he logs into a remote host. The Nautilus bookmark takes her to an unexpected location.

I added "nautilus" as an affected package per Arnaud's comment. Maybe this doesn't actually affect gvfs at all; only the way Nautilus handles gvfs sftp connections.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

why do you think it's a nautilus issue?

[Paul Natsuo Kishimoto (khaeru)]

1. There is unexpected behaviour using (nautilus + gvfsd-sftp).
2. Sebastien says gvfsd-sftp is behaving as it is designed to do.
3. Therefore nautilus is the likely source of the unexpected behaviour.

To me this is very clear. Is there something else that would prove this is in nautilus as opposed to some other package?

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

There's a similar report here: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=561998

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Well this is a gvfs issue, upstream was reassigned to the gvfs component also, rejecting the nautilus task, thanks.

[Philipp Gassmann (phiphi.g)]

The bugs importance is higher.

If you don't have the rights to access the root folder, you get an ugly error.
pasting the path doesn't work neither.

See this bug: (marked as duplicate)
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/312722

[Tobias Jost (tjost)]

I think this is quite an annoyance when working in remote directories via SSH. When I log on via ssh shell I start in my Home Folder, thus this is my default expectation when connecting via gvfs.

I think this could be a simple fix so I subscribed 100 Paper Cuts. Correct me if I'm wrong with this.

[Patrick (veinor)]

It's probably a simple fix, but at the same time not a paper cut, since Joe User isn't likely to use SFTP.

[Mikko Ohtamaa (mikko-red-innovation)]

Patrick I see your viewpoint, but there is little more depth in this issue.
As far as I know SFTP is recommended by Ubuntu as a secure method to put files to the server. It is very visible in the default setup of the system. Alternatives like FTP and WebDAV surely aren't better... so it is basically drawing a like what's Average Joe and what's not - I see remote copying of files as normal task which you might encounter in your studies and at least in your company work.

But this indeed does not matter. Hints how to solve this bug SFTP and GVFS are welcome. If it's just few simple lines I could probably patch it together.

[Mikko Ohtamaa (mikko-red-innovation)]

Actually the bug is not as simple as you might think.

It would be trivial to fix Nautilus/GVFS to map the URL sftp://<email address hidden> to sftp://<email address hidden>/home/mikko.

However this violates the URI specification RFC r3986 as discussed in the upstream https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=561998

sftp://<email address hidden>

should be same as

sftp://<email address hidden>/

which is effective the server root folder.

Command-line SFTP does not respect URI specification in the first place.

The suggested fix was to have sftp://<email address hidden> to do a "SFTP specific redirect" to sftp://<email address hidden>/home/mikko.

[Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

This is fixed upstream now.

[Mikko Ohtamaa (mikko-red-innovation)]

Does the upsteam contain fix for Nautilus also? Upstream bug mentioned something that special support for Nautilus must be implemented.

Alexander Larsson [gvfs developer] 2009-11-26 15:32:29 UTC

all right, now we just need nautilus to respect this.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the bug is fixed in lucid now

[David Siegel (djsiegel-deactivatedaccount)]

This seems like a reasonable paper cut. Using Nautilus for FTP or SFTP is a fairly common workflow for transferring files. Sure, most users are not affected, but I know quite a few "average" users who use FTP for basic tasks like updating personal/small business web sites, and making it so that they do not have to navigate to ~ is a huge improvement.

[Tobias Jost (tjost)]

The bug is still reproducible in Lucid for me. Nautilus still opens at the Rootlevel when leaving the direcory field blank.

[mike levine (nasmaster)]

i see this issue in 10.04 LTS. I am trying to login to a yahoo webhosting account. nautilus says "the file is not a directory" because the root of the sever is inaccessible. The ubuntu client should go to the home directory, just like every other FTP client does.

all the bugs seemed to be marked as fixed, but they aren't.
who dropped the ball?
where should new info go?
should we open a new bug?

[Philipp Gassmann (phiphi.g)]

@Mike Levine: that a bug is fixed doesn't mean it will be fixed in your current app. New features and regular bugfixes will appear in future versions of a package.
Security relevant fixes and some important bugs will get backported to current versions and updated in stable releases.