[CentOS] "Windows" share issue; access via smb:// fails, "mount -t cifs" works

Tue Aug 30 08:00:06 UTC 2016
Toralf Lund <toralf.lund at pgs.com>

Hi,

Is anyone here using smb:// URLs to access "Windows" shares? I've been 
doing this for a while with common file systems at work, and it used to 
work just fine. Then I while back, I started getting issues; I will now 
just keep getting asked for a password when I try to access something 
through smb://. I thought at first that this meant there had been some 
kind of change related to permissions on the shares, but now I find that 
I can mount them just fine using "mount -t cifs".

In other words, I get:

gvfs-mount smb://mydomain\;toralf.lund@theserver/myshare
Password required for share myshare on theserver
Password:
Password required for share myshare on theserver
Password:
Password required for share myshare on theserver
Password:

[ I enter the correct password, but gvs-mount keeps asking... Behaviour 
is the same if I try to open the URL in the file manager instead. ]

mount -t cifs -o user=toralf.lund,workgroup=mydomain //theserver/myshare 
/tmp_mnt/
Password:

[ At this stage the filesystem is mounted, as long as I enter the 
correct password. ]

Does anyone have any idea what is going on here? Why does the VFS mount 
fail when mount.cifs works on the same share? Is there a difference in 
the way authentication works, or something? Has there been a change to 
the smb support that might explain this?

This is on a CentOS 6 x86_64 installation with all updates applied.

- Toralf