Hello, I seem to be settling for Peppermint and so am getting the thing more fully set up now.
One big requirement is for an icon on the desktop to give me direct access to my NAS drive.
Apart from convenience, I think I need it in order to set up the navigation to the media files in VLC.
Many thanks,
Smiler.
gedit ~/Desktop/nas.desktop
When an empty file opens … make it read
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Icon=network_fs
Name=NAS Drive
GenericName=NAS Drive
Comment=Browse the NAS drive and manage the files
Categories=FileManager;Utility;Core;GTK;
Exec=pcmanfm /full/path/to/the/NAS/mountpoint %U
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false
MimeType=x-directory/normal;inode/directory;
You will need to edit the bit in red … to the path to where your NAS drive is mounted
(if you copy/paste the above … visually check it before saving, as occasionally an extra space creeps in whilst copying)
SAVE the file.
You should now have an icon on the desktop called “NAS Drive”
Try’d that but the gedit location doesn’t appear valid.
Do you have the Desktop folder?
In any case you can manually create the desktop file:
Right click on desktop then Create New->Text File (name it nas.desktop)
Once created open with Leafpad (or editor of your choice) and add the text Mark indicated (edit it to suit)
Save the file.
Unless as SeZo suggests you’ve somehow deleted the Desktop directory (in you home directory) … that command:
gedit ~/Desktop/nas.desktop
WILL open gedit and create a file when you hit save.
Are you SURE you entered it correctly ? … remember Linux commands ARE case sensitive.
(try cutting/pasting the command into the terminal)
Also as Sezo says, you could right-click the desktop and select Create New>Blank File … name it nas.desktop … then just right-click the nas.desktop file and select Text Editor … which will open it for editing in gedit.
Then edit it as in my previous instructions.
But that command SHOULD work ???
Not stepping on your toes Sezo … just reflecting that the right-click context menu names are slighly different in Peppermint, and that you can right-click a “.desktop” file and it will offer “Text Editor” as an option … I wish Nautilus did that … Nautilus can be VERY confusing where .desktop files are concerned … leaving you needing to list the directory contents to get the files ACTUAL name, then having to start gedit from the command line, or start gedit then navigate to the file IN gedit.
Not stepping on your toes Sezo .. just reflecting that the right-click context menu names are slighly different in Peppermint
Apologies, I should have learned that the LXDE enviroment is not the same in all distributions.
To my defense, I was using Salix LXDE at that time. :-[
When I try to save the gedit file I get a red bar saying:
Could not find the file /home/smiler/desktop/nas.desktop.
SeZo - Cheers, I’ll try that if I continue to balls Marks instructions up. 
No problem. In the meantime pls. check that you are typing Desktop (not desktop)
I appear to be a bit of a twonk!
Gedit file created, just have to tweak it now to get the nas drives location correct.
With the NAS drive mounted and accessible … what is the output from:
mount
Results:
/dev/sda1 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro,commit=0)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
none on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
none on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
none on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/smiler/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=smiler)
Hope that makes sense because I can’t see anything in there.
This is the contents of the gedit file:
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Icon=network_fs
Name=NAS Drive
GenericName=NAS Drive
Comment=Browse the NAS drive and manage the files
Categories=FileManager;Utility;Core;GTK;
Exec=pcmanfm /smb://AWESOME_ARCHIVE/ %U
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false
MimeType=x-directory/normal;inode/directory;
Try making the Exec= line read -
Exec=pcmanfm smb://AWESOME_ARCHIVE
or
Exec=pcmanfm smb://
as in
Exec=pcmanfm smb://192.168.0.200
or whatever the NAS drives IP is
I am however thinking this may not be what you’re actually wanting … is the problem that VLC cannot display the NAS Drive when you select Media>Open File ?
If so, you may want to mount the NAS Drive from fstab … so it’s automatically mounted at bootup, and can then be searched from within VLC.
Is that the problem ?
First line got it sorted. Cheers.
See the bit I added to my last posting
Ah, yes, I see what you mean.
I have just try’d media.>open file and navigated to the nas drive folder but it didn’t do anything with it.
Something else I’ve noticed, I can’t get any thumbnail views of the folders contents. That is something that will quickly become a pain in the arse as the nas drive is full of photos.
OK, thumbnails are easy … open the pcmanfm file manager, and got to Edit>Preferences>Display (tab)
Now make sure there is no tick in “Only show thumbnails for local files” and click “Close”.
As for mounting the NAS Drive in fstab … I’ll write instructions later (probably tomorrow).
Do you know the file system in use on the NAS drive … and/or what is the make/model of your NAS Drive ?
Cheers, I have thumbnails! Though I did have to increase the max file size a bit.
The nas drive is a 1TB Buffalo Linkstation which I believe is a windows based product.
This would explain why the auto-wakeup feature doesn’t work when I switch this machine on but when the missus turns hers on it wakes up every time.
That will make it easy … I have one of those … and just FYI, the Linkstation (at least the Linkstation Live) runs Linux, and uses the XFS filesystem.
Is yours the Linkstation Live LS-CHL 1000GB ?
Yeh, AFAIK, there’s no way to get Auto-Wakeup to work … but you can set the drive to spin down when not in use, not that I’ve bothered changing that … I’m not convinced that spinning up/down drives makes them last longer.
LinkStation LS-CH1.0TL