cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/58872408

Hey,

So I’ve been connecting to an ftp server which I worked on with apps like GNOME Builder, and backed up the contents of with Pika Backup, connecting to it via the GNOME Files application, Nautilus, from the Network tab.

Recently, apps stopped being able to read files I opened with the file picker hosted on the ftp server, and after a lot of debugging I realised that was because Nautilus had for some reason switched from mounting the files under /run/user/1000/gvfs/ftp_address to the more abstract path ftp://ftp_address, under the virtual directory computer:///. Now apps can’t read those files as they are not mounted under an actual path.

I couldn’t find a way in Nautilus, FileZilla, or Dolphin to mount the ftp server files under a specified path /mnt/ftp_username, or even to put it back to the unwieldy but still working path it was under before, using a GUI.

I was recommended by an LLM assistant to use the curlftpfs command, but even with several variations of a command such as the following

sudo curlftpfs -v -o "uid=$UID,gid=$GID" ftp://username:correct%20password@ftp_address /mnt/ftp_username

it always gave the same error

Error setting curl:

I’m not sure what else to try, could I have some advice please?

  • talEnglish
    21·
    1 day ago

    I haven’t ever used curlftpfs, but I imagine that if this is the problem and if Fedora doesn’t have a fix, it’s probably possible to build it out of tarball and use a wrapper around curlftpfs as a temporary workaround. It doesn’t look like curlftpfs lets you specify the path to the curl binary, so probably need to modify PATH prior to invoking curlftpfs.

    Like, something along the lines of:

    • build curl 8.8.0 from tarball, stick curl binary in directory (say, in /opt/curl/)

    • Create curlftpfswrapper.sh:

        #!/bin/bash
  export PATH=/opt/curl/:"$PATH"
  exec curlftpfs "$@"

    • Drop curlftpfswrapper.sh somewhere in your PATH.

    • Use curlftpfswrapper.sh instead of curlftpfs as long as it’s broken.