hacking on shares-admin?

[Andrey Yurovsky]

Hello.  I just wanted to introduce myself and ask about who I should contact regarding hacking on the shares-admin tool from gnome-system-tools.  I would like to get involved with gnome-system-tools and I had some ideas for improving the Samba user experience.  I'd like to know how to get started and if my idea is something that's already being implemented or if I should just go ahead and work on it.

I've noticed that most regular users (especially those used to Windows) have a terrible time sharing files with samba.  They use shares-admin to set up one or more shares but then:
- Windows asks them for a password to access the share, but no passwords work (their account isn't added via "smbpasswd -a")
- they want to have certain shares for certain users and so on (they don't know how to add users, edit smb.conf and set the "users=" option)
- they have trouble with groups, permissions, and so on

I've helped several people by showing them how to add users, edit smb.conf to set up permissions, and restart samba and then things work well.  However this really should be a simple matter of the 'configure' button in shares-admin allowing one to checkmark which users or groups may access a given share.  There would be a tie-in to the users-admin tool as far as making new users and groups is concerned.  This, I believe, is what Windows allows users to do as far as the File Sharing configuration, and I'd like to see it in Gnome.

Please let me know if/how I could help.  Thanks,

  -Andrey

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[Carlos Garnacho]

Hi Andrey!,

On Sun, 2007-02-11 at 18:05 -0800, Andrey Yurovsky wrote:
> Hello.  I just wanted to introduce myself and ask about who I should
> contact regarding hacking on the shares-admin tool from
> gnome-system-tools.  I would like to get involved with
> gnome-system-tools and I had some ideas for improving the Samba user
> experience.  I'd like to know how to get started and if my idea is
> something that's already being implemented or if I should just go
> ahead and work on it.

It's great news that you want to hack on shares-admin, you're more than
welcome :)

>
> I've noticed that most regular users (especially those used to
> Windows) have a terrible time sharing files with samba.  They use
> shares-admin to set up one or more shares but then:
> - Windows asks them for a password to access the share, but no
> passwords work (their account isn't added via "smbpasswd -a")
> - they want to have certain shares for certain users and so on (they
> don't know how to add users, edit smb.conf and set the "users="
> option)
> - they have trouble with groups, permissions, and so on

I have to admit that I've had little opportunities to test shares-admin
in mixed network environments, but those seem perfectly valid use cases.

>
> I've helped several people by showing them how to add users, edit
> smb.conf to set up permissions, and restart samba and then things work
> well.  However this really should be a simple matter of the
> 'configure' button in shares-admin allowing one to checkmark which
> users or groups may access a given share.  There would be a tie-in to
> the users-admin tool as far as making new users and groups is
> concerned.  This, I believe, is what Windows allows users to do as far
> as the File Sharing configuration, and I'd like to see it in Gnome.

It would be great indeed, feel free to join #gst on irc.gnome.org if you
want to discuss about it or want some help/opinions :)

Regards,
   Carlos

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