Several users [1][2][3] have already reported that accessing OpenOffice.org
files served over SMB (both Windows 2000 and Samba) in Linux fail to open in
OpenOffice.org (at least 2.2 and 2.3) with the generic error message: "General
Internet Error"

I've tested this using abstractions such as Gnome's VFS and KDE's KIO, and it
seems that OpenOffice.org doesn't handle permissions and/or locks correctly. In
both Gnome and KDE you need to either mount the filesystem or use other
strategies (in Gnome, 'Connect to server' won't work but in KDE using smb4k will
do since it actually mounts the filesystem)

The problem disappears in Samba if the owner of the file matches the username on
the credentials, which is also achieved if all users are 'admin users' in Samba. 

Otherwise, in most cases, trying to browse SMB shares using KDE's or GNOME's
filesystem abstractions and open OOo files will result on 'General Internet
Error' if the user is not an owner of the file. Having the user on a group which
owns the file and has write rights doesn't work either. Extended ACL's doesn't work.

Also, a lock problem has already been discussed in the Samba mailing list [4]
and it seems that OOo doesn't handle locks correctly.

This problem is currently making OOo unusable on files stored in our SMB shares
on a 5000+ users network. We tried using 2.2 and 2.3, but that doesn't make the
difference.

Finally, other applications are able to use the same files over the same
abstractions, for example gedit and evince in Gnome.

Thank you very much for your time and work on OOo,
Jose

[1] http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?p=255433
[2] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openoffice.org/+bug/94326
[3] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.network.samba.general/33951
[4] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.network.samba.general/41976/focus=42103