Servers, phones and cameras

Skwir speaks no network protocol and keeps no password of its own. A server’s folder is one that a tool you have installed mounts (sshfs, GVfs, KIO’s kio-fuse, rclone, or a line of your fstab), and Skwir shows it as a folder it knows is remote, with the same views and previews as any other.

Open a server

Type its address in the address bar (CtrlL) and press Enter:

While it connects, the pane says Opening …, with Cancel. The address completes the servers Skwir knows and the hosts of your ssh configuration.

Skwir tries the tools in the order Settings › Network › Opening addresses gives, among those installed: sshfs, kmtp (for a phone KDE holds), GVfs, KIO (before GVfs on KDE Plasma), rclone, then your fstab. On KDE Plasma, smb://, dav:// and ftp:// open through KIO, with KDE’s own dialogs. GVfs works wherever it is installed, even when nothing has started it yet.

What to install

Each tool opens its own kinds of address; install those you need. The skwir package suggests them all.

Passwords and keys

• A password is asked in the window, and so is ssh’s question about a server it has never seen. Remember keeps the password in your desktop’s keyring; a password Nautilus remembered is used too. Forget Password, in the server’s menu, removes it.
• On KDE Plasma, KIO asks with KDE’s own dialogs, and uses the passwords KDE keeps.
• Set Up Key Login…, in an SFTP server’s menu, puts a key of yours on the server over one login: no password is asked after that.

The Network section

The sidebar’s Network section lists every server, mounted or not: those you added, rclone’s remotes, and GVfs’s and KDE’s. A server that is connected shows how full it is.

• Add Server…, in the section’s menu or in Settings › Network, adds any kind. A server by its address is kept in Skwir’s own list or, on KDE Plasma, in KDE’s network folders, which Dolphin shows too. One of rclone’s remotes (a cloud storage, an encrypted remote over another, a union of several) is set up in forms made from what rclone asks, with a sign-in through your browser where a cloud needs one. rclone’s configuration can be encrypted, its password kept in your keyring.
• Keep as Server turns a bookmark of a server into one.
• A server’s menu has Mount Options… (read only, rclone’s cache, bandwidth), Connect at Login (through your system’s service manager, for a server that asks nothing at login), Set Up Key Login…, Sign In Again…, Test, Edit and Remove. Settings › Network lists every server, with the same actions.
• Eject, on a server’s row, lets go of it, even one that no longer answers.

Nearby

At the end of the Network section, Nearby lists the servers your network announces: a NAS, a Mac, a Windows PC. Avahi and wsdd find them while you look at the list, and only then. A server’s menu adds it to your servers.

Phones and cameras

• A phone plugged in for file transfer (MTP), a camera or a phone in its photos mode, and an iPhone are listed among the drives as soon as GVfs offers them. Opening one mounts it; plugging it in never does.
• A phone that another program holds (KDE’s kiod6) says so, and which. On KDE Plasma, a phone KDE holds opens through KDE itself, by Skwir’s phone helper, which needs FUSE (fusermount3). Disconnecting it lets go of Skwir’s folder, never of KDE’s hold.
• Copying onto a camera, or a phone in its photos mode, writes the files in place.

In a server’s folder

• Thumbnails show where the server is on your local network, and for small files elsewhere once a copy from it proved it fast. The server’s menu, or Settings › Folders and views › Thumbnails in remote folders, chooses otherwise.
• Previews read each file once, and the file shown before is kept for a minute in case you come back to it.
• A server that stops answering says so above its files, with Go Back and Disconnect, and holds nothing else up.
• Delete there deletes for good, and asks first: nothing on a server goes to this machine’s Trash.
• Finding: the folder is filtered as you type, as anywhere; a search of its subfolders waits for Enter (Searching).
• rclone’s mounts keep what they read. A copy onto one ends only once the server has it, and a file another program left to send says so on its place (Sending 1 file to the server…).

Copies to and from a server

• In batches: through rsync over the ssh connection, sftp or gio where those are faster, several files at once. A large file comes down in several parts at once, and a copy within one server is made on the server (through rclone’s own copy too, where its storage can). Many files are deleted there in one go. On KDE Plasma, copies to and from KDE’s remotes go several at once through KIO’s own tool.
• Speed and time left show in the footer as the copy goes (What runs). Onto a mount that sends what is copied afterwards, such as rclone’s caches, it first says then sent to the server, then the sending’s own speed and time left.
• Retry: an action a server stopped is retried from where it stopped, with Retry in its message, and goes on by itself once the server answers again. A large file goes on from what got across; a folder keeps the files it had finished.
• Undo works on a server that keeps no trash: what a copy made is removed, while it is unchanged. A copy the server refuses as it finishes is said to have failed, and a move then keeps its original.