Thunderbird as snap app can't write to mounted NAS location

I use external drive on NAS which is mount by fstab:
/192.168.1.99/ase /home/michal/Dokumenty cifs uid=1000,username=michal,password=xxxxxxxxxx,iocharset=utf8,user,auto,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777 0 0
I use this drive without problems in Nautilus but Thunderbird can’t write mail attachments to all external locations. I turned ON all permissions for TB but with no effect. Is the way to fix this? When I used TB as DEB there wasn’t any problems. I don’t wanna back to DEB because is always an older version and it seems that Cannonical trying to force using snaps. I don’t checked this but I suppose that problem refers to all snap apps not only TB.
I use this machine to work and all important files are on NAS. The location where I mounted external drive (inside a home dir) is a must because i use a absolute links to directories stored in my database. Now I store an attachment in temporary directory on local disk and then I copy it to destination location on NAS using Nautilus, this is frustrating.
My inxi output you can find in this topic: No mouse reaction on gnome activities search panel - #4 by nevj

I am not super experienced with snaps, but I know the default permissions are limited. Here is a link that might help add permissions needed to access a network share.

https://ubuntu.com/blog/security-corner-snap-interface-snap-connections

This may not fix your issue, but I’ll do a little more searching and see what I can find. Good to learn anyway.

Another similar link regarding adding permissions for a snap.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1225968/connect-snap-interfaces

Someone suggested how to add permissions for a zoom client. Hopefully something similar will work for you. Obviously it shouldn’t need access to audio or video like zoom does.

sudo snap install zoom-client

sudo snap connect zoom-client:audio-record
sudo snap connect zoom-client:camera
sudo snap connect zoom-client:hardware-observe
sudo snap connect zoom-client:network-manager
sudo snap connect zoom-client:system-observe
1 Like

Hi @michal ,
I dont know much about snap, but try what @pdecker says… It sounds like there are ways of giving snap apps more file access ability.

On the general issue of versions of TB. Is the very latest version realy needed? My personal feeling would be to stay with the .deb version.
Snap is rather new technology and it seems to have many issues. The conservative tactic is to wait another few years until it settles down. Canonical will not persist with snap if the issues are not addressed.
They cant afford to back a dead horse.

Regards
Neville

Thank You @pdecker for links. After a “snap interface” command preview I can’t find interface that points to external locations. I’ve tried a “system files” but reply is “error: snap “thunderbird” has no plug named “system-files””. Meybe I will ask a Thunderbird team. New version of TB has some nice features (e.g. grouping messages to a threads) which I like, I consider to install DEB version manually. In general i thought that snaps will be a remedy for long delays updating apps versions in Ubuntu repositories.

I noticed that TB writes files to another remote location which is mounted to /media dir instead of /home. It seems that /media directory in linux has a special privileges for mount external devices. When You use snaps better mount drives to /media. It may be useful for all having similar problems.

If you find a solution be sure to post back. Seems like a good topic that would apply to other snaps.