renaming a shared folder from within nautilus causes inconsistent sharing information

[John Baptist]

Binary package hint: nautilus-share

What happens:

Renaming a shared folder from Nautilus stops the file from being shared but keeps the sharing emblem.

What I expected to happen:

If you rename a shared folder, from either within Nautilus or from any other program, it should continue to be shared.

To reproduce:

1. Create a new folder on your desktop by right-clicking and selecting Create Folder.
2. Share the folder by selecting its Properties dialog, Share tab, click Share this folder, and Create share. At this point, the folder will be shared and a sharing emblem will be added to the icon.
3. Close the Properties dialog.
4. Right-click on the folder and select Rename. Rename it to anything else.
5. Now open the Properties dialog again, Share tab. According to the Share tab, the folder is no longer shared, and it is not accessible from the network. However, the sharing emblem remains, indicating to the user that it is still shared.

Additional notes:

The same thing happens if you move the shared folder to another folder (in Nautilus), instead of renaming it.
Moving or renaming a shared folder not through Nautilus (e.g., with the mv command) does not cause this problem. Instead, it causes a different problem, that the share is completely forgotten (that is, both the emblem and the Properties dialog indicate that the folder is not shared). Later, if you create another new folder with the same name as the original, it will be shared, even though the user has not indicated that it should be (this is a security problem and might be a separate bug).

My opinion, if I may be so bold:

Tracking potentially moveable/renameable folders strictly by pathname is not a good solution here. There should be another way to keep track of which folders are shared, so that samba/nautilus-share don't get confused when allegedly shared folders get moved. Possibly we need a file reference object that will be updated automatically in response to move/rename operations, like MacOSX's CFURL object.

Applies to nautilus-share 0.7.2-12 on Karmic.

[Chow Loong Jin (hyperair)]

This is a duplicate of Bug #400830.

  duplicate 400830

--
Kind regards,
Chow Loong Jin (GPG: 0x8F02A411)
Ubuntu Contributing Developer

[John Baptist (jepst79)]

This is not a duplicate. 400830 has to do with creating a new folder
of the same name, which WILL also be shared (although it shouldn't
be). This bug has to do with renaming an existing folder, which WILL
NOT be shared (although it should be).

[Chow Loong Jin (hyperair)]

On Tuesday 03,November,2009 07:03 AM, John Baptist wrote:
> *** This bug is a duplicate of bug 400830 ***
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/400830
>
> This is not a duplicate. 400830 has to do with creating a new folder
> of the same name, which WILL also be shared (although it shouldn't
> be). This bug has to do with renaming an existing folder, which WILL
> NOT be shared (although it should be).
>
It is a duplicate. The TRUE bug is that nautilus-share does not update share
information when the directory is renamed/moved/deleted. That's it. Both this
bug and the other bug are incomplete specifications.

--
Kind regards,
Chow Loong Jin (GPG: 0x8F02A411)
Ubuntu Contributing Developer