"Connect to Server" not working in MATE

Help
1

I am running NixOS with the MATE desktop environment. When I click on “Places” and then “Connect to Server…”, I get the following message:

Can't load the supported server method list.
Please check your GVfs installation.

Anyone know how to fix this? I tried installing the nixos.gvfs package, but I am still getting the above error.

2 Likes
2

There are some problems with gvfs in Gnome too. It could be something similar to https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/50254

3

Installing the package would not work, you need to register the D-Bus service and possibly some other things. We have NixOS modules for that; see what GNOME does:

https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/7226ab90843f8cb366f0e6f90ba16e8214e19bdb/nixos/modules/services/x11/desktop-managers/gnome3.nix#L138

4

I tried adding services.gnome3.gvfs.enable = true; to my configuration.nix and rebuilding, but it didn’t help.

I am new to NixOS, so apologies if I am misunderstanding. Do you mean that I need to create a new service for MATE, named services.mate.gvfs? How would I do this?

5

I tried adding services.gnome3.gvfs.enable = true; to my
configuration.nix and rebuilding, but it didn’t help.

That should be sufficient. Is the error still the same? Do you see any
errors in the systemd journal?

6

The error is the same.

journalctl | grep gvfs shows nothing. When I click on “Connect to Server…”, the journal adds only:

nixos xsession[916]: Gtk-Message: 07:23:38.737: GtkDialog mapped without a transient parent. This is discouraged.

7

It also needs the following in configuration.nix:

  environment.variables.GIO_EXTRA_MODULES = [
    "${pkgs.gnome3.gvfs}/lib/gio/modules"
  ];
8

Pull request mate: enable gvfs service by romildo · Pull Request #56469 · NixOS/nixpkgs · GitHub should fix this issue.

9

Adding the above from romildo fixed it for me. Thanks everyone!