xubuntu-devel Digest, Vol 35, Issue 17

[Jeff Hanson]

On Sat, Jul 19, 2008 at 7:00 AM,
<xubuntu-devel-request at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:
> From: "Chris Francy" <francyci at gmail.com>
> To: "Xubuntu Development Discussion" <xubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com>
> Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 01:09:22 -0700
> Subject: Re: Community Meeting updates
> On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 8:59 AM, Vincent <mailinglists at vinnl.nl> wrote:
>> For those who don't know, a quick overview can be read at [1], the meetin log can be read at [2].
>> [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xubuntu/Meetings/Archive/Minutes/2008-07-12
>> [2] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MeetingLogs/Xubuntu_2008-07-12
>
>> [16:11] <cody-somerville> Who has tried that fusesmb hack?
>> [16:13] <cody-somerville> Might we could do is have fusesmb mount on login configured with their credentials, etc. etc.
>> [16:12] <cody-somerville> j1mc, although I couldn't write to share but I dunno if that was fusesmb or how the share's configuration
>
> I have used the fusesmb for network browsing.
>
> Installing by default worries me a bit.  With fusesmb you have to
> store the unencrypted smb passwords in a text file for it to work.
>
> On the system where I use fusesmb I have dm-crypt setup for all my
> filesystems.  So having my passwords unencrypted in the filesystem
> isn't as big of an issue since the entire partition is encrypted.   I
> don't think most people use whole-disk encryption though.  So it seems
> like users should be warned/reminded about the possibility that anyone
> with a livecd could steal there authentication credentials.

Desktop-integrated password support is on the dev's todo list:
---------------------------
TODO/IDEAS

    * Incorporate NBTScan in network scanning. Libsmbclient is quite
unreliable, this should also help cross-subnet searching.
    * DBUS/DCOP connection for password integration with desktop environments.
    * Integration with the desktop by popping up a dialog which asks
for username and password would be nice.
    * Additional support for <mountpoint>/HOSTNAME next to
<mountpoint>/WORKGROUP/HOSTNAME. This would make integration with the
current desktop environments easier. Only a search replace
<mountpoint> with smb://

http://www.ricardis.tudelft.nl/~vincent/fusesmb/
---------------------------

In a business network passwords authenticated with a server are
important.  But most home Windows networks I've encountered are
peer-peer.  On Ubuntu I normally create two folders writable by
everyone - "local" and "public".  The latter is shared with Samba with
"map to guest = bad user" set in samba.conf.  Without a central server
password authentication is a pain.  I also assume that all Windows
systems are compromised so any password set will be public knowledge.
Using fusesmb this way makes it easy as no passwords are required.
I've found that fusesmb doesn't browse across routers although I
haven't really tried hard.  With Gnome I can connect using the IP
address of the system on the other side of the router
(smb://192.168.x.x).

This is how I set up fusesmb on Xubuntu Gutsy:
http://jhansonxi.blogspot.com/2007/11/smb-browsing-in-xubuntuthunar.html

There is also this project which I haven't tried yet:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/smbnetfs