Ubuntu Wiki

• Launchpad Entry: https://launchpad.net/products/camille.percy/+spec/guisambaconfigurator

• Created: [Date(2006-6-9)] by Camille Percy

• Packages affected: A new package to be created (ubuntu-config-samba)

Summary

• Designing a GUI tool for setting up / configuring SAMBA shares on Ubuntu which has following things:
• A simple tool for adding, removing SAMBA shares and configuring various options like read-only, read-write sharing, authenticated, unauthenticated use, etc.
• The tool will save user-entry configuration to /etc/samba/smb.conf

Use cases

• This tool help to make ubuntu as a complete Desktop Operating system & make it easy as possible .

• Joe has just installed MS Windows on his laptop and wants to transfer the files with his Ubuntu machine in the same home network.He can do it with share wizard as easy as possible .
• At a workstation there is an Ubuntu server which service some windows clients.Server administrator
  • wants to share some folder on server with their clients .He/She can do this easily by this GUI Samba Tool.

Scope

• Samba Share & Configuration

Design

• The GUI Configuration Tool for managing Samba shares, users with which permissions , authenticated or unauthenticated, and basic sambaserver settings .
• The GUI tool will have some wizard for sharing directories with configurable options for permissions to make as easy for newbies as possible.

• It should have secure defaults (read-only shares with no authentication, for example), but allow user to configure Advance Option under Advanced tab .

Proposed properties of the GUI tool (from the https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GUISambaConfigSpec)

• Configure Server/Workstation Options
  • Hostname
  • Workgroup
  • Description
  • Advanced
    • Master browser status
    • Other common advanced options
• Shares Config
  • Path to share
  • Share name
  • Share permissions (Opens in a new dialog)
  • Mount exported shares
• User account management
  • Add / remove users

Implementation

* The tool will be written in Python & GTk+ so that it blends with the GNOME Desktop well.

• There is a similar tool 'redhat-config-samba'[http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/config-tools/redhat-config-samba.html ] in Red Hat & Fedora Core which released under GNU GPL . This tool was written in python by using pygtk lib.It can be reused if needed.