missing shares-admin

I can confirm this. It has been said that shares-admin is no longer needed, now that Nautilus can enable folder sharing too, but this little app was a good, centralized point to manage the whole SMB (and NFS) config, a feature lost with its removal. Furthermore, what about Xubuntu and Mythbuntu?

did you read the update changelog? that's not a bug but a decision, the software is not really maintainer and doesn't respond to user expectations since it doesn't allow anonymous shares and users have to use the command line to add credentials

Ok, so the app was bad and unmantained, so it got removed. Even though the decision seems wrong to me, because there is no clear alternative for a centralized management other that full-blown Samba managers like SWAT, I can live with it. So, will there be a centralized network shares administration applet installed by default in Ubuntu Hardy? And if so, which one?

Habbit wrote:
> Ok, so the app was bad and unmantained, so it got removed. Even though
> the decision seems wrong to me, because there is no clear alternative
> for a centralized management other that full-blown Samba managers like
> SWAT, I can live with it. So, will there be a centralized network shares
> administration applet installed by default in Ubuntu Hardy? And if so,
> which one?
>

Of course, it's been changed to nautilus-share, which supports sharing folders
anonymously. So this is not a regression, as we will have a (better) replacement
for it.

>Of course, it's been changed to nautilus-share, which supports sharing folders
>anonymously.

Is it really nautilus-share that's supposed to be the replacement comes Hardy? I was of the impression that nautilus-share wasn't very well localized. At least it's not translated at all to Swedish.

Let me remark that nautilus-share is not a _centralized_ (i.e. system-wide on a single window) shares management point, it's just an applet that lets you right-click share folders without the administrative hassle. So it's not a replacement for shares-admin. What I'm asking is: will there be a (similar) replacement, i.e. a default-installed centralized shares administration app? Oh, and by the way, AFAIK nautilus-share only does SMB, while shares-admin also managed NFS.

nautilus-share is the ONLY tool that use "usershare" way provided by samba.
Using usershare is the only way to let users share with samba without having admin rights.

For the first time since warty we can share by samba (in guest) mode without using tricks, all working from ubuntu or windows clients.

Now that nautilus-share is installed by default, everybody is welcome to improve it (gui/options/translation etc.). Go guys :)

Habbit, not there will not be a such tool in the default hardy installation, shares-admin was not working correctly (no anonymous sharing, no way to set login and passwords for the shares, etc) and shipping it is not doing a favor to the users. Did you try gadmintools or gsambad for example?

I've made a local translation of nautilus-share to Swedish (I need it for parts of my household). How do I go about submitting my translation? Perhaps it's of use to others. nautilus-share doesn't seem to be a registered project at launchpad (at least I couldn't find it). Also, for some reason the ./configure script doesn't detect my po-file...

sorry for being slightly off-topic.

there is bug #208707 about translation issues

Ok, so once again, what about Xubuntu, which does not have Nautilus, and thus, nautilus-share? Will there be no default-installed Samba admin tool?

no idea about xubuntu, they do whatever they want, they could install gsambad or similar. Given the choice between a broken tool than only command line users will be able to use and no tool it's less confusing to not install something not working rather than having users wondering why there is a dialog available which doesn't work

Isn't it a bad idea to remove a major feature from the user interface after feature freeze?

I bet you would be getting a lot more bugs reports but many people can't figure out what happened.
Or they setup there shares before the last update and they haven't needed this tool yet.

It took me quite a while to figure out "What happened to that menu entry that used to let me share files?"
I had to use another computer that was still running gutsy to figure out what the menu item was and track down which package it used to belong to.

I checked out the package description for natilus-share.
It has no reverse depends.
Most people won't be getting it.

You haven't answered Habbit's point about nfs.
Is there a GUI for doing nfs? Is it installed by default?

Your attitude about xubuntu is really strange.
I know Canonical does not fully support Xubuntu.
But, it is not nice to break them.
Have you let the xubuntu/mythbuntu folks know you are breaking them after feature freeze?
Will exceptions be allowed to feature freeze so xubuntu/mythbuntu can get some GUI working for their distributions?
(And Canonical does encourage Xubuntu use. The Xubuntu download link is on ubuntu.com front page.)

Getting rid of shares-admin is probably the right thing to do in the long run.
But the way this is being done seems wrong.
You need a transition plan that gets the new tool into place by default and keeps the old tool (possibly in Universe?) working for a while.
And removing features after feature freeze is bound to cause trouble.

Amen, Michael!

I have submitted Bug #209856 against mythbuntu and sent email to xubuntu-devel.
Those projects need to know about this issue.

let be constructive rather to rant, the change has been discussed during the uds and planned for this cycle, it has been late right but everybody is overworked.

would you argue that the tools was working? you can't share anonymously using it and you need to use the command line to set a password to do a normal share. what do you think the normal user reaction to this is? we got many bugs asking why we ship something which doesn't work, because they share things over smb but nobody can use those.

about how it'll be installed, ubuntu-desktop recommends it which means all the new installation and upgrades using a tool installing recommends will get it installed

nfs is not something which we consider has a real user demand in a desktop distribution, it might be useful for some users but doesn't request justify installing this one

about xubuntu nobody from their team complained yet and the change has been discussed at uds. if they need it we can add a binary they can install, but there has a been no demand for that yet, and installing something which doesn't work is rather a disfavor to users

now could you explain for what users you need this tool is working? because in all those complains there is no real constructive comment describing the needs for something which can't be used. did you read all the bugs about why a tool which is not working is installed? do you really think that it would be better to use this one rather than nautilus-share?

Sorry if I sound like I'm ranting.

I used the old tool without any trouble on gutsy.
I understand it is broken in some ways for some users but it always worked OK for me.

I didn't have any trouble setting up shares using the #3 build in Hardy.
But I haven't checked that I can actually get to those shares from another computer.

Perhaps I'm being an idiot complaining about you removing a broken tool?

I'll check when I get home tonight.

OK Sebastien, I'm here to eat my words. Indeed I am an idiot.
I agree that the #3 build of shares-admin on hardy is completely broken.
Attempting to set up a share doesn't work at all.

I also tried shares-admin on my gutsy laptop.
It worked OK. There was one bug.
I had to restart smbd to make the shared folders visible from another computer.
So my memory wasn't fooling me it really did work before.

I found several other issues with Thunar and XFCE. They seem to be missing lots of functionality besides just sharing files. So I've had to switch back to gnome desktop on my mythtv box to get the features I need.

I see some issues with nautilus-share.
I'll report them in the right place.

> would you argue that the tools was working? you can't share anonymously using it and you need to use the
> command line to set a password to do a normal share. what do you think the normal user reaction to this is? we
> got many bugs asking why we ship something which doesn't work, because they share things over smb but
> nobody can use those.

Seb, that's just half true, shares-admin gained the ability to set SMB passwords during the last release, and AFAIK share-level security is strongly discouraged by SMB developers, that's why shares-admin never implemented this.

Carlos, nautilus-share uses the new netshare samba feature and not what you cann share-level. Note that shares-admin doesn't ask for a password on ubuntu which is a bug and might be easy to fix but the desktop team is already overworked and nobody else has showed interest to debug this one

Would it be possible to still provide a (unsupported universe based) binary package called shares-admin? Other GTK based desktop solutions (Such as Xfce) used shares-admin in the past, and making nautilus a dependency isn't a good idea.

Ubuntu Hardy Beta fresh install & fully updated as of April 7, 2008, Gnome desktop.

Right clicking a directory from Nautilus and selecting "Sharing Options" then "Share this folder", "Create Share" on a user folder results in:

'net usershare' returned error 255: net usershare add: failed to add share <foldername>. Ero was Operation not permitted.

Ironic in that I can manually add the share in /etc/smb.conf and it will share just fine.

1. I think that nautilus-share is broken.
2. Users migrating from Gutsy to Hardy will have no idea as to how to add Samba and/or NFS shares without something in the System|Administration or other menu to guide them. Merely assuming that they will know how to set up a shared folder via nautilus-share (albeit a broken one) will not work.

I'm somewhat familiar with Ubuntu (Dapper - Edgy - Fiesty - Gutsy - Hardy) and Samba on each of those, but I can say that trying to set up Samba shares on Hardy has been difficult. Had I not known how to manually edit the /etc/smb.conf file by hand I'd still be scratching my head on how to get the share working.

@NoOp : it's already reported : Bug #212098

The removal of shares-admin is a problem for me too... I think it is a good idea to make sharing easy from nautilus (if it works), but IMHO it is also important to be able to manage the shares "globally", in a tool that displays all the shares in one place.

@Lilian : try system-config-samba may be ?

@Patric Vetsel : I installed but it doesn't start. After a search, I found this is a know problem (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/system-config-samba/+bug/185543) and solved it with "sudo touch /etc/libuser.conf".

Now it starts but doesn't show me the share I just create through nautilus-share. The share works well but isn't listed in system-config-samba, nor in /etc/samba/smb.conf !?!?!?

@Lilian : Sorry i'v badly understood your :
"manage the shares "globally""

As said before :
"nautilus-share is the ONLY tool that use "usershare" way provided by samba.
Using usershare is the only way to let users share with samba without having admin rights."

system-config-samba don't know how to handle the usershare system provided by samba (report this bug if you want).

You can browse usershare for your system in /var/lib/samba/usershare

@Patrice : Thank you, usershare seems to be very interesting !

Even if it is a very good thing to let users share folders without admin rights and also allow optional guest access to these shares, I think the owner (admin) of the computer should have a tool that gives a centralized view of all the shares (usershare and "standard" samba shares).

And I also think the removal of a graphical tools for managing nfs shares is a regression...

Best regards
Lilian

+1, the removal of shares-admin is a regression IMO. Hiding it by default from the ubuntu menu would have been great, but not deleting it. What if I want to remove all shares on my computer? I have no way to see if there is still shared folders! Also shares-admin gave more advanced options.

A few comments:

1. This seems to have been removed without any care for the Ubuntu variants that don't rely upon nautilus.

2. The shares-admin tool wasn't for advanced configuration, but was still a centralized place to configure sharing (which many modern OS's/distros seem to have). The addition of some advanced functionality (plus fixing major bugs) would have been a better choice, rather than removing it altogether. IMO, nautilus-share is nice, but not an acceptable replacement.

3. NFS is now harder to configure for the average user, and not even mentioned as an alternative to Samba in any dialogs. This will certainly encourage Samba sharing, something which is not ideal for someone in a non-Windows environment. Is it really a good idea to present Samba as the primary way to share files in Ubuntu? Why discourage a standard Unix protocol like NFS on a Unix-like system?

4. When I click "Share this folder" in nautilus-share, I get a dialog with the message, "You need to install the Windows networks sharing service in order to share your folders." How about an option to install NFS via that dialog (as with shares-admin)? I don't need or want samba installed on my home machines, and I have no way of quickly setting up NFS shares (something I sometimes do to temporarily share files between machines).

Sean,

- that's not a true statement, read the previous comments, the tool is just not working and that's no a favor to do to those users. The ubuntu team also works daily on IRC with people from derivatives distributions and we got no request for them to revert this change

- right, nautilus-share is not a reply to every usecase, again as mentionned before shares-admin was not replying to what is expected from the default tools, it's written in perl and not easy to maintain and upstream decided to work on other projects now which means the distribution team would have to work on a code that nobody in the team really knows

- nfs is not something trivial to set up and not something that fit desktop users needs, the tool was really limited to do nfs configurations and system administrators not likely use this one to do their configuration. Advertising nfs for user sharing is not a good idea, you should rather install gnome-user-share which doesn't bluetooth sharing and webdav sharing using apache and advertize services over avahi so thy are automatically listed in nautilus on other local computers

Sebastien Bacher wrote:
> The ubuntu
> team also works daily on IRC with people from derivatives distributions
> and we got no request for them to revert this change
>
That's not quite true. I'd like to refer you to
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-system-tools/+bug/208480/comments/21
where Mario Limonciello, the benevolent dictator of Mythbuntu, requests
that shares-admin is made available again.

the comment doesn't suggest that a derivative distribution need the binary, and you should subscribe to the bug if you are interested in a discussion, anyway this discussion is not leading anywhere so could people stop commenting there and rather start a discussing on the list where users can reply and give their opinion? the bug tracker is not about discussing changes and no users are subscribed to bugs and will comment there

did anybody try to install system-config-samba? any reason it's not enough for people who need a such application?

Sebastien,

sorry if I offended you. I'm actually subscribed to this bug through the Mythbuntu team.

I've just tried system-config-samba. Except for #213942 which is probably easily solved (if touching /etc/libuser.conf is the correct solution), it looks pretty good.

no offence, I'm not opposed to consider undoing the change (though we will not use the nautilus code and mask the item under GNOME) if other people really need the software, but doing that has a maintainance cost and it would be nice to have a real statement about mythbuntu wanting this rather than a standard question from a team member, it would also be nice to have somebody from mythubuntu looking at the corresponding bugs since the software will benefit their users

Hi Sebastien,

For Mythbuntu, we were using this as a centralized location to configure NFS and Samba. NFS is used a lot more in our case, so having some sort of means to the old shares-admin tool in Xubuntu and/or Mythbuntu (moreover XFCE) would be very good for us.

It's fine if its is blacklisted in some sort of fashion in GNOME, but there is a lot of value to it under situations without nautilus.

This bug was fixed in the package gnome-system-tools - 2.22.0-0ubuntu8

---------------
gnome-system-tools (2.22.0-0ubuntu8) hardy; urgency=low

  * debian/control.in,
    debian/gnome-system-tools.manpages,
    debian/menu,
    debian/patches/00list,
    debian/patches/11_shares_admin_not_listed_under_gnome.dpatch,
    debian rules:
    - install shares-admin again since it has been requested by several users
      and some derivative distributions, it'll also make easier to edit
      previous shares for users upgrading and having some configured,
      don't install the nautilus integration and not list
      the menu item under GNOME though (lp: #208480)
  * debian/patches/90_from_svn_correctly_configure_interface.dpatch:
    - change from svn, correctly configure the network interfaces,
      thanks to the different people who worked on the issue (lp: #185854)

 -- Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:31:56 +0200

shares-admin is now installed by default again, however there is no icon in the System / Administration menu, should we consider this as a bug or shares-admin will stay hidden?

could you read the changelog before asking such questions?

Sorry, I missed one line.

On 04/14/2008 02:49 PM, Sebastien Bacher wrote:
> could you read the changelog before asking such questions?
>

Thanks *very* much for adding this back in.

Can you:

1. Please explain why shares-admin is no longer listed the menu
System|Administration menu? I'm sure there must be a good reason, but it
would be helpful to know why.

2. Please explain is the best/proper method now to invoke shares-admin?

From the terminal I did the following. While each did bring up the
application (I've not tested it further), each also encountered errors:

========
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ gksu shares-admin

** (shares-admin:5797): CRITICAL **: Unable to lookup session
information for process '5797'
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo shares-admin

(shares-admin:5877): Gtk-WARNING **: Unknown property: GtkComboBox.items

** (shares-admin:5877): CRITICAL **: Unable to lookup session
information for process '5877'

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ shares-admin

(shares-admin:5891): Gtk-WARNING **: Unknown property: GtkComboBox.items
========

The reason is documented in the changelog, the official way to use smb in hardy is nautilus-share, shares-admin is there for derivative distributions and users upgrading who need to do changes, the menu item is easy enough to add using the menu editor if you need it. Running shares-admin is the right way to use it, not sure why it's not working for you

>> the menu item is easy enough to add using the menu editor if you need it

Sebastien, "NotShowIn=GNOME;" is used in the .desktop file. This means

a) it will show up in other DEs. Is this what you want?
b) it does _not_ show up as a disabled launcher in Alacarte for those of us who want to re-enable it. I think it would need the NoDisplay=true entry for this to work?

right, one of the reason this has been re-enable is for xubuntu and other non GNOME derivatives to have the option available that's why it's masked in GNOME only, agreed that the change is not ideal but we got no complain so far so that seems good enough

Hello Sebastien,

I've upgraded from 7.10 to 8.04.1 this weekend. (I know: it is late, but....)
One of the problems I encountered was the shares-admin menu entry which
disappeared without further notice.

In my oppinion removing menu entries is always a very bad idea.

After some research I stumbled over this bug entry here: I've now also read
the file /gnome-system-tools-2.22.0/debian/changelog as you suggested.

Please note: The package `nautilus-share`was not installed by default during
my upgrade. Even after installing this, it is not obvious to me, how to use it.
May be it is required to restart Nautilius after installing the package?

However: I'm still not convinced, that this library is a suitable replacement for
the shares-admin program.

Best regards and keep up the good work,
Peter Funk.

how did you upgrade? update-manager should have done this change. there is no real point to discuss the change again since the bug has already enough comment about this topic

Sebastien asked:
> how did you upgrade? update-manager should have done this change.

I can confirm this: on another machine here update-manager worked and the
package nautilus-share was indeed installed afterwards.

On my personal notebook I had problems during the upgrade with update-manager:
After the X11 configuration broke due to a API version mismatch with the NVidia
driver I had continue the upgrade from a text virtual console using apt-get distupgrade.
So please forget about my previous comments concerning the missing nautilus-share
package: This was probably caused by my tinkering after the failed upgrade in the first
place.

Regards, Peter.

Well, added a Gnome bugzilla bug about this

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=550199

Windows workgroup name must be put somewhere and shares-admin can
handle it or change Nautilus rightclick to also include workgroup.

Thanks !