User not added to group sambashare: "You do not have permission to create a usershare."

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

I also have the same problem on Precise which has had clean install. The user is in the group sambashare.

I'm not able to workaround this: I've tried creating the share logging in as another user who has administrative privileges but I get a different error message (something to the effect that I don't own the folder to be shared. I'm able to do shares of folders owned by users with administrative privileges.

This is a real pain. Surely, it should be regarded as having high priority: it's common for Windows users to want to access folders shared by Ubuntu users.

Apologies. I didn't notice the "sudo usermod -a -G sambashare" command in Jakob's original post. That command fixed the problem. However, IMO, standard users should not have to ask their administrator to do this when they first want to share a folder. The same applies to home users who are administrative ones as they should not have to use the CLI.

BTW, before I used the above command, the user was showing in the Samba Users window of the Samba Server Configuration app. I assumed that this window specified the users who could define shares. Am I wrong?

On 03/01/2013 18:44, John Rose wrote:
> BTW, before I used the above command, the user was showing in the Samba
> Users window of the Samba Server Configuration app. I assumed that this
> window specified the users who could define shares. Am I wrong?
>

No, that's not it. That configuration application only deals with configuring
the smb.conf. What is needed is for you to add yourself to the "sambashare" group.

The users-admin tool in the past could deal with adding users to groups but
things have changed and the current one seems rather deficient, which is why you
need to drop to a terminal to do this.

That said, I think a fresh install should get it right, unless I'm mistaken.

--
Kind regards,
Loong Jin

If I'm not mistaken this only affects non-Administrator user accounts. It is happening on my fresh installation of 13.10.

Steps to reproduce:

1) Create a new unprivileged user using the User Accounts control panel
2) Login with this new user account
3) Try to share a folder with Nautilus

Expected results:

- The share is created

Actual results:

- Sharing fails with error:

'net usershare' returned error 255: net usershare: cannot open usershare directory /var/lib/samba/usershares. Error Permission denied
You do not have permission to create a usershare. Ask your administrator to grant you permissions to create a share.

On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 07:46:51PM -0000, Ricardo Graça wrote:

> If I'm not mistaken this only affects non-Administrator user accounts.
> It is happening on my fresh installation of 13.10.

Well, I don't think anything can be done from the perspective of
non-administrator user accounts.

As a non-administrative user, you're not able to add yourself to sambashare, and
hence nautilus-share can't take care of this for you under your own account.
This means the error message is valid, and you do need to ask your system's
administrator to add you to sambashare.

The only usecase that would be valid for fixing in this case would be an
administrative user who happens to not be in the sambashare group -- then
nautilus-share could perhaps invoke a privileged helper through policykit to
help the user add him/herself into the sambashare group.

--
Kind regards,
Loong Jin

This is happening in lunar beta 23.04,.
I install nautilus-share.
Turned on sharing in Gnome preference (both options)
When attempting to share a folder:

'net usershare' returned error 255: net usershare: cannot open usershare directory /var/lib/samba/usershares. Error Permission denied
You do not have permission to create a usershare. Ask your administrator to grant you permissions to create a share.

Hello,
This issue appears again in Mantic (fresh install).
And in Mantic, nautilus-share is not installed by default. So you must add it manually. So, it's less user-friendly.