NTFS partition/volume cannot be shared via SMB

[RS Anders]

Using installations or LiveCDs of 10.10, 11.04, 11.10, and 12.04 on multiple computers, I am unable to share NTFS partitions or disks via SMB using the sharing function in Dolphin. It last seemed to work in Kubuntu 10.04.

I can successfully create a share, and it can be seen from other devices, but it either cannot be accessed from other devices (e.g. an Ubuntu 10.10 machine, Windows boxes on the network, Android, et cetera) or, if accessible, the files themselves are not visible.

This issue does not appear in Ubuntu 10.10, in which such sharing is effortless.

I have tried various efforts and searches over the months of having this issue (including attempting manual addition via smb.conf) but have not found a suggestion which has worked, and given that it has persisted across multiple releases and occurs on multiple machines as well I must conclude it is a bug (one which, incidentally, is the reason I am not all-in for Kubuntu on all my devices).

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: dolphin 4:4.7.2-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-19.33-generic-pae 3.0.27
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-19-generic-pae i686
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
Architecture: i386
Date: Thu May 3 10:54:02 2012
InstallationMedia: Kubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release i386 (20101007)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: kde-baseapps
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-10-21 (195 days ago)

[RS Anders (rsa7078)]

I have found a workaround for this, but it is still an issue in that it does not work as one would expect out of the proverbial box.

Here are the things I needed on the 12.04 LiveCD:

1. Install Samba via Dolphin (right-click a folder, then Properties, then the Share tab)
2. Created a lesser user
This was simply a security precaution so my main user account password with sudo capability isn't saved on some smb-capable devices where it would be in plaintext. You may also be able to do this just by "sudo smbpasswd -a user" rather than creating an entire user account.
3. Logged in as user in order to create a password properly
4. Install NTFS-config (sudo apt-get ntfs-config)
5. "Sudo NTFS-config" and configure
6. "Sudo Dolphin" to share the folder, giving user full control.
7. "Sudo service smbd restart"