Failure to save to a CIFS (Windows) Share - Remains Unanswered

I’ve noticed a number of posts to this forum regarding the inability to save files to a Windows (CIFS) Share. I am running Crunchbang 11 (Waldorf) and LibreOffice 3.5.4.2 Build ID: 350m1 and I am unable to save to a Windows 7 share (CIFS). I have not tried with NFS but I don’t have occasion to use NFS. This is quite annoying and impacts our ability to adopt Linux in the enterprise.

You do not mention the method by which you are mounting / accessing the network shares e.g., FUSE, GVFS, /etc/fstab entries? This is important information for these types of issues. Here is a summary of the various questions and answers to-date on AskLO that relate to CIFS network share issues:

  • 2012 Mar, Opening/saving over network. Ubuntu 11.04-11.10 (tested under Mint 13?); Gnome GVFS; LO v3.4-3.5. Proposed resolution is to mount shares through /etc/fstab rather than using GVFS.
  • 2012 May, General I/O error on Alfresco CIFS. No platform; file manager; LO version. No resolution but likely related to the “2013 Mar” issue.
  • 2013 Jan, Unable to open files over network. Debian 7.0; Gnome GVFS?; LO v3.5.4.2. Accepted answer suggests ensuring the libreoffice-gnome package is installed. Answer by @qubit1 also contains good instructions for testing file access.
  • 2013 Mar, Unable to export PDF over network. Ubuntu 10.04; Gnome GVFS?; LO v4.?. Related bugs fdo#54275 and fdo#64311 both provide fixes to GIO/GVFS for v3.6.6 through v4.0.4.
  • 2013 May, General I/O error when saving over network. Ubuntu 11.04; Gnome?; QNAP/NAS; LO v3.3. Unresolved, but appears related to bug fdo#38419. Comment #2 in that bug offers a proposed /etc/fstab solution. Whether this bug will ever be fixed, given the age of the LO version, is uncertain, especially considering the same issue (refer “2013 Mar” thread) appears to have been fixed for late v3.6 versions and earlier v4.0 versions.

I think the “2013 Mar” thread is most likely to be the solution to the situation you are experiencing. You could try the nobrl option in an /etc/fstab mount in the meantime as that appears to be effective. The old (EOL) version you are running will need to be upgraded sooner rather than later although I understand this is not always possible in a corporate environment.