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We have a small intranet with a few Samba shares.. I can browse them easily with Nautilus (on Ubuntu Jaunty), but whenever I try to make a link to a shared file (to the desktop for example) the resulting symlink is invalid.

The command

ls -l ~/Desktop

shows a symlink such as

shared_file -> /shared_file

If I manually create a location launcher by context menu, it works fine (but then it creates a .desktop file, not a symlink)
Can anyone confirm this behaviour? :) Is there a simple workaround? (One that a non-techie could use)
Thanks!

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Are you mounting those shares or are you "simply" using gvfs? – innaM Jul 17 '09 at 13:40
I'm just using Nautilus.. Network -> samba server -> share -> files – Joril Jul 17 '09 at 14:26
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2 Answers

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You can't symlink to a samba share directly due to the way symlinks work - they can only point to a pathname, not a remote filesystem. However, since gvfs includes a FUSE daemon you should be able to symlink to ~/.gvfs/sharename/path/file.

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I think Nautilus should do this automatically, not just create a non-working link.. :/ Anyway I opened a bug report on Launchpad.. Thanks for your time! – Joril Jul 18 '09 at 17:42
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You could create a new shortcut and prefix it with smb://[server]/[path]. This is not a solution for creating it automatically using Nautilis but you could potential create a few of them on a share and copy them to each desktop.

I am hoping someone else has got a better solution.

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So you confirm this happens to you too.. As for the "automatically", I already have in place an update system that I could use to create the links on every desktop, but I'd like to allow a bit of "indipendence" to every user.. That is, if someone wants a new link she should be able to create one on her own :) Thanks for your answer though! – Joril Jul 17 '09 at 14:30
No - I don't use this facility. I stop using shortcuts and mapped drives ages ago, every one in my house knows how to use smb:// or \\ in Windows. – Diago Jul 18 '09 at 17:23
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