[system-tools] hacking on shares-admin?

["Andrey Yurovsky" <yurovsky gmail com>]

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.

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'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.

Please let me know if/how I could help.  Thanks,

  -Andrey