Re: File sharing with Nautilus

[Joshua Adam Ginsberg <joshg myrealbox com>]

On Sun, 2003-08-17 at 14:04, Superfrog wrote:
> What's the status of being able to share directories directly from
> Nautilus ?
> 
> The ideal is similar to windoze, kde and Mac os X. Right click on a
> directory -> share as -> dialog.
> 
> Looking at the way other do, it would be very interesting that one
> single dialog allows to choose :
> 
> 	- Folder name to share
> 	- Display
> 	- Access level (Read / Write)
> 	- Protocol (smb / http / ftp / nfs)

Hmm... so far, it requires root access, depends upon a properly
configured Samba server, web server, ftp server, and/or nfs server...

> The ideal of different protocol is a great advantage. I've seen people
> using kde working with read only HTTP shares in our company. Any others
> can connect to the shared computers with only a web browser ! That very
> handy.

Well, which web servers do you want to support? Only Apache?

> For smb, it obvious the benefits it provides... but destop users MUST be
> able to share folders without going to command line editing... and
> Nautilus is the place to do that !

Again, requires root access and an already configured Samba server.

> Looking at tools like redhat-config-samba is very interesting : it only
> update the /etc/samba file with a very simple addition. The same can be
> done for /etc/httpd.conf. Same goes to KDE.
> 
> Any status and ideals / feasibility / comments of such feature ?

Okay... first off, you're talking root access required on everything...
Second, by the end of your share configuration in Nautilus, these
servers have to be present, running, and properly configured... Which
means whatever scripts we write to do all of this must take into account
more than just the simple cases:

1) What if any of these servers are not configured or not running? 

2) What if the firewall blocks access to them? What if you want one
network interface to have access to the servers and not others?

3) What if the servers are already configured and running? How do you
implement these shares into an already running instance of Apache? Do
you use a unique port? Do you use a unique URI? Do you use virtual
hosting?

4) NFS? FTP? These can be pretty damn insecure if not configured very,
very carefully. If our scripts aren't as intelligent as your
above-average network administrator, then there will be security holes
created that even an above-average network administrator might not be
aware of.

In Win9x this is much more simple: the SMB server setup is three blanks
and there is no other access to it than from the Network setup menu;
there is no pre-existing webserver, ftp server, or nfs server. With *nix
-- (c) 2003 The SCO Group -- you have to worry about much more flexible
configuration, multiple means of configuration, and the *nix security
model.

I wish it could be as simple as you'd like. It seems like that'd be
pretty hard.

-jag