Bug#849525: Bug also confirmed in version 1.28.2

[Hamilton Engineering]

On Mon, 14 Aug 2017 21:41:20 -0500 Jason Crain <jason at inspiresomeone.us> 
wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 14, 2017 at 05:15:56PM -0400, Markus Hamilton wrote:
> > The bug is still there using version 1.28.2 now ... in fact there 
are forum
> > discussions and bug reports all over the internet about this 
problem for
> > years now. Could we at least get a statement from the maintainers 
whether
> > this will ever get fixed or is there some policy we could implement 
to allow
> > this. SOME information would really help to figure out where this 
is going.
>
> From the gvfs-mount manpage:
>
> -a, --anonymous
> Use an anonymous user when authenticating
>
> This option was added in gvfs version 1.23.90 so gvfs-mount (or gio
> mount) should work on stretch or later. On earlier versions you can try
> entering a fake username and password depending on how you have samba
> set up.
>
> About pcmanfm and caja - I don't see any problem with anonymous smb
> shares using nautilus so this is likely something that pcmanfm and caja
> need to add support for.
>
>

I think we misunderstand each other. I am not talking about anonymous 
access. I am talking about accessing a samba server which does not have 
anonymous (guest) access enabled. So users do have to provide a username 
to be able to login. Some of these usernames (aka smb accounts) just 
have no (or in other words an empty) password. Using anonymous access 
will not work (disabled on the server). A fake username will not work 
either (unknown to the server). It has to be a valid username and an 
empty password. Using mount via command line works fine. Here's an 
example - "markus" is a valid smb account at the server. The password is 
empty.

sudo mount -t cifs //servername/sharename /mnt -o 
username=markus,password=""

But when I try the same operation using gvfs-mount like this:

gvfs-mount smb://servername/sharename

Then the first thing gvfs-mount does is spitting out a message saying 
"Password required for share sharename on servername". It then asks for 
username, then domain and finally password. Just hitting "enter" doesn't 
cut it. gvfs-mount asks again for the password.

So far I have not managed to mount a smb share using gvfs-mount if the 
valid smb account simply is passwordless. If you can tell me how to do 
that then I'm ready to shift the blame to pcmanfm and caja. "mount -t 
cifs..." is living proof that it's not a samba (or Windows, for that 
matter) problem.

So again: how do I gvfs-mount a smb share with a non-anonymous, valid 
smb username but without entering (because there is none) a password?

Thank you for reading here. There are so many users out there with the 
same problem. It used to work. It stopped working at some point during 
the life of jessie.