Re: hacking on shares-admin?

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