Thunar refuses to display any contents of a directory containing a subdirectory that it can't stat due to an I/O error (e.g., a broken FUSE mountpoint)
If foo/bar
is a FUSE mountpoint with a broken connection, Thunar generates an error message when attempting to display the contents of foo (which is reasonable; there is actually an error), and then displays nothing at all, even if foo
contains dozens or hundreds of files and directories that can be statted (which is not reasonable). This is true even though it clearly can navigate foo
; if foo/baz
is another subdirectory that is not broken (and does not contain any broken subdirectories or files of its own), attempting to display foo/baz
works fine.
Expected behavior: Thunar should display the contents of foo
. This should include an entry with stats for everything that is stattable, and an entry for bar
with an error message in place of stats; displaying nothing at all where stats would normally be would also be acceptable. In a pinch, even omitting bar
entirely (having already flagged its existence and issues with the aforementioned error message) would be better than the current behavior (which prevents easy access to all the working files and subdirectories).
I have observed this phenomenon with both sshfs (broken by internet issues), and jmtpfs (broken by physically removing the relevant mtp device). Given the nature of the error, I believe that this issue applies more broadly to any subdirectories (or files?) that can't be statted due to an I/O error, and not only to FUSE mountpoints, but my direct observation is limited to the latter. Similarly, I have only directly observed this with "List View" selected; I expect that it would also apply with icons, but do not know for certain.
Preferences -> Advanced states that "It looks like gvfs is not available," which I don't think is actually correct; in any event, that seems like it might be relevant to issues with properly displaying working FUSE filesystems, but shouldn't matter for the broader "one file or subdirectory being broken shouldn't prevent the display of all others" issue.
Possibly relevant: I don't have a full XFCE desktop environment, just Thunar.