'net usershare' returned error 255

[Tom H]

On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 10:11 AM, listofx <listofx at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I want to share a directory to friends. I do remember that it has once
> worked before in nautilus just by right-clicking on a directory.
>
> but now, it prompts:
>
>>         '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.
>
> ls -ld /var/lib/samba/usershares told me
>>         drwxrwx--T 2 root haldaemon 4096 2010-07-21 21:12 usershares/
>
> I consider the group haldaemon is highly suspicious since it is located
> after user 'upload' (see below) I created for uploading. see vipw below.
> Who created this user?
>
>>         xiang:x:1000:1000:Xiang Liu,,,,:/home/xiang:/bin/bash
>>         privoxy:x:114:65534::/etc/privoxy:/bin/false
>>         ftp:x:1001:65534::/home/ftp:/bin/false
>>         upload:x:1002:65534::/home/upload:/bin/false
>>         haldaemon:x:115:121:Hardware abstraction layer,,,:/var/run/hald:/bin/false
>
> There is also a group called haldaemon in my system. (the last line in /etc/group)
>>         haldaemon:x:121:
>
> I have tried to find other files or directories owned by haldaemon with
> intention to finally find out a package which causes a new user
> haldaemon. Utilizing command 'find', I did not obtain any valuable
> results.
>
>>         xiang at xiang-laptop:/$ sudo find ./ -group haldaemon -print
>>         xiang at xiang-laptop:/$ sudo find ./ -user haldaemon -print

The uid and gid are different from mine but haldaemon is a valid system user.

Whether the haldaemon group is meant to "own" usershares, I have no
idea. I have never used samba's usershares and have never set up samba
through a GUI.

I am pretty sure that I have seen someone post this error before and
that the solution was to remove and add the user from the sambashare
group before setting up a share.