Setting file sharing

[mark1592]

File and Folder Sharing;

After reading the question about file and folder sharing I had the same problem. Unable to set file or folder shares with Mint 5. I installed the "nautilus-share" package and rebooted the computer. The shares function was now available in the properties menu but it still would not allow me to setup the file or folder shares. The error message said I did not have authorization to perform that function. After opening the Nautilus Actions config and setting the "open as root command" I was able to set the folder and file shares and everything is now working perfectly.
Thanks CD;

Why was this package not installed with the Mint 5 to begin with? Mark

[Amorphous_Snake]

I really wish that the Mint developers fix the Samba issues in Hardy. They removed the Shared Folders from the System menu, and even if you open it from the Terminal, you can't edit anything. Now, all I have is a "Share this folder" button in "Properties" that doesn't work because I don't have the necessary permissions!!! I even can't change my workgroup without editing the smb.conf file.

Great work, Ubuntu guys!!! If it's broken (Ubuntu's Samaba is broken compared to Samba in Mandriva and openSUSE), then fix it, don't break it more!

I hope that Mint is better.

[Critom]

I had a simular problem and i think this sorted it out.

Administration>Users and Groups
Unlock it
select your username
Properties>User Privileges
and tick the box marked "Share files with local network"

I am a relative newbie so cannot swear that this is the correct way or best way to do this but it solved the issue with the permissions.

I would be happy to be pointed at another maybe better way from someone with more knowledge.

[chromeronin]

I guess the question is then with aal the open source goodness in the world, is there a GUI for a universal share mounting application?
Mount SMB, NFS, CDROMs, crpytfs etc? I mean I've seen some nice tools for setting up mounting local partitions with appropriate options, so why has getting network shares mounted been so hard?

[chromeronin]

. . . . I've seen some nice tools for setting up mounting local partitions with appropriate options, so why has getting network shares mounted been so hard?

I would think it would be a priority. Across all the people working on all distributions, with all the tools that are already out there, surely they could make this a little more straightforward, a little more transparent.

And I'm not getting any help with my problem. My requests have been sitting on this forum for a couple weeks now. I've stopped using my Linux system. I've been getting by with the laptop I bought to install Ubuntu on in my initial enthusiasm for Linux. No way now. Not at this point.

Perhaps it's payback for my whining. If I knew what I was doing I probably wouldn't appreciate it either. [And here I am, doing it again.] But I'm very frustrated, to the point almost of giving up.

Regards,

Don't give up. remember the point of linux is that it isn't windows
There are somehtings that windows does nicely, one of these is allowing normal users to mount SMB shares and allowing user to share their own folders by default and with no hassle. But just you try to get Windows to mount a drive through an SSH tunnel, or mount an NFS share, or make an FTP server look like a local folder etc.. Remember SMB is alien to Unix Also from a system admin point of view I spend my day sometimes making sure users don't just map to anything they want to from their desktops but I do wish it was easier to make sure all linux users could see the same network resources from wherever they are without having to write 1000 lines of script.

[chromeronin]

Don't give up. remember the point of linux is that it isn't windows . . . .

First, thanks for responding.

That said, I'm close. As I say, I haven't a clue how to get file sharing between my Mint desktop and my xp laptop.

Remember SMB is alien to Unix Also from a system admin point of view I spend my day sometimes making sure users don't just map to anything they want to from their desktops but I do wish it was easier to make sure all linux users could see the same network resources from wherever they are without having to write 1000 lines of script.

Weird dilemma for me: If I could just get a decent installation going on Linux -- i.e., including file sharing -- with the system I've got, I'd invest in a new machine, with standard, Linux-friendly components, put Linux on it, and maybe even do what I planned to do with the laptop -- put Linux on *it* -- and just leave file sharing with Windows behind altogether.

Crazy, but until I can do that, I'm not gonna jump into Linux with both feet. Maybe if I would my problems would be solved. Maybe they wouldn't.

You wouldn't have any suggestions for about file sharing, would you?

In any case, seriously, thanks for the encouragement.

Sincerely,

OK, I'm going to admit that I haven't tried file sharing from an Ubuntu/debian/mint box. I've set up openSuse 10.2 on an old PC and I use it as my primary file server (using SAMBA)on my home network (and because it has heaps of memory left over, it is also a virtal server)

But I think they first things to check would be after installing the samba server components is to make sure the samba server is running:
Open a terminal: enter
sudo /etc/init.d/samba status
should say "* SMBD is running" if all is well.
Next would be the contents of the samba configuration file /etc/samba/smb.conf. Can you post here the part of the file detailing the share you wish to make: If not sure, the whole file is not too large.

Also are you getting an error from the clients attemempting to connect to the Samba share?

[dickiemint5]

Thanks. But had to do some research though, and your instrucions were explicit.
Have a openSuSE 10.3 system working on the internet, and did not want to make it a samba server, but was flumoxed when trying to get Mint to act as a client. Could read it 'out of the box' but could not write.
Again, Thanks
Dick
Gloucester
UK