Opening network files in any application

SonicDE's own applications can work directly with network locations, such as sftp:// or smb:// addresses. Many other applications only understand files on your computer.

When you open a network file in one of those, the KIO FUSE service makes it appear as an ordinary local file, and gives the application that path. This happens by itself: you don't need to set anything up or mount anything. Without the service, the file would be downloaded to a temporary copy instead.

#Saving changes

When an application saves the file, the change is written to a local cache first, and uploaded when the application closes the file. This means that:

• An error during that upload can't be reported to the application, so check important files after saving them.
• Keep the network connection up until the application has closed the file.

#Using it by hand

You can mount a network location yourself, for example to use it from a terminal:

dbus-send --session --print-reply --type=method_call \
    --dest=org.kde.KIOFuse /org/kde/KIOFuse \
    org.kde.KIOFuse.VFS.mountUrl string:sftp://user@example.org/home/user

The reply gives the local path, which follows the pattern <mount point>/<protocol>/<user>@<server>/<path>. The mount point is in your runtime directory, usually /run/user/<your user ID>/: it's called kio-fuse on a system using systemd, and kio-fuse- followed by random characters on others.

There's no way to unmount a single location. Unmounting the mount point ends the service for every application using it, so close them first:

fusermount3 -u /run/user/$(id -u)/kio-fuse

The service needs FUSE 3 on your system.