Cannot set LAN name without console

[JLR]

Binary package hint: nautilus-share

Just that :)
If you share a folder, you share it on the "WORKGROUP" LAN. My LAN's name is INICIOMS (MSHOME for english people). I can go to smb.conf and change it, but, ¿where is the GUI to do that simple tweak"? It doesnt exist or it seems so.

[JLR (artirj)]

Wishlist?
This is Hardy LTS and this is this is a medium bug.
We could do this on gutsy, why not on hardy?

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and help to improve Ubuntu.

There are many configuration options in smb.conf that it may be necessary to change in order to fully integrate your fileserver with a particular computing environment, including not only 'workgroup', but also the 'wins server', 'security', and 'lanman auth' settings. The purpose of nautilus-share is not to be a comprehensive management interface for integrating your Ubuntu desktop with an existing Windows workgroup/domain, but to provide simple filesharing capabilities, and I think it succeeds in this.

It would be nice to have stronger GUI management capabilities for setting the workgroup, but I agree with Patrice that this is a wishlist bug.

[apostate (apostate)]

Umm...no it is not. This is functionality that has disappeared with the "upgrade". There are many users who are new to this OS, that you are trying to woo over from more fully featured desktops... Windows XP. They are not going to sit still for this. I as a Linux user wouldn't either, I'm looking at an upgrade path from 7.10 Gutsy to OpenSuSe 11.

The GUI control to change workgroup names is not an option in a 21st Century OS, it is a requirement.

[apostate (apostate)]

On a second read, that last comment came out harsher than I meant it to. I guess I'm just getting over this phenomenon I've started to see in Ubuntu devs and Gnome devs in particular, of just whistling past the graveyard of usability and treating the users like ants at the picnic. The windows shares are BROKEN by any reasonable user's standards, and a frank acknowledgment of the problem would go a long way.

[Witold Szczerba (witold-szczerba)]

If there is something available in release X and then comes an update Y, like 7.10 and 8.04, and there are features missing in new release which were available in previous release, then it is a regression bug. Such a bugs should always have high priority.

Marking regression as "wishlist" is, in my opinion, not a fair move from users' perspective, it should be fixed as soon as possible.

Regards,
Witold Szczerba

[dmizer (dmizer)]

Nautilus cannot browse Windows shares unless Ubuntu is a member of the same workgroup as the Windows share host ("View entire Windows network" is not possible in Nautilus). So, unless you have an easy way of configuring the workgroup, you're forced to configure a full fledged samba server.

[Chow Loong Jin (hyperair)]

There's one such program bundled in the package called gadmin-samba. I'm marking this as invalid, because you clearly can use this program (gsambad) to set the LAN name without using a console.

[Patrice Vetsel (vetsel-patrice)]

I don't agree with your comment Chow Loong Jin. Before ubuntu 8.10 we have a tool, installed by default in gnome, to let user change his workgroup. Since nautilus-share is the default tool to share by samba, and since the tool to set workgroup have been removed, this is a bug (very minor -> whishlist, but a bug), assigned to nautilus-share. Nautilus-share should be patched to add the possibility to let user set the workgroup name.

[Chow Loong Jin (hyperair)]

On Wed, 2009-05-13 at 11:03 +0000, Patrice Vetsel wrote:
> I don't agree with your comment Chow Loong Jin. Before ubuntu 8.10 we
> have a tool, installed by default in gnome, to let user change his
> workgroup. Since nautilus-share is the default tool to share by samba,
> and since the tool to set workgroup have been removed, this is a bug
> (very minor -> whishlist, but a bug), assigned to nautilus-share.
> Nautilus-share should be patched to add the possibility to let user set
> the workgroup name.
>
Are you talking about shares-admin? That's still installed by default in
Ubuntu, just that the launcher doesn't show in GNOME by default. And in
that case, perhaps this bug should be assigned to that package instead
(gnome-system-tools, I believe).

--
Regards,
Chow Loong Jin