GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 451359
no password prompt for share also accessible anonymously
Last modified: 2018-08-17 13:49:52 UTC
The bug has been described on https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-vfs2/+bug/119774 "I have a SAMBA server for my home. I've setup shares that are guest-accessible, but are only writable by authenticated users. On a windows box, it shows a prompt asking for the password - if it is provided, the access is authenticated. If it isn't provided, it falls to the guest access. But, on a Ubuntu box, using nautilus to browse to "network", it doesn't ask for the password, and there are no options on Gnome GUI to set the user/password to use when connecting to the share. The only way to access the shares with the proper permission is editing the /etc/fstab file, as said on the guide : https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MountWindowsSharesPermanently The expected is to have a prompt when connecting, asking the password or suggesting the use of guest account, or having a "properties" on the server, where one can set the username/password to use. ..."
This bug is still active in the latest release of Ubuntu (7.10). Moreover, a collary to this behavior is that Gnome (at least as configured in Ubuntu) is always allowing guest access to SAMBA shares, which means all shares are world-readable, but restricted write. I see this is two problems, although they may have a single solution: 1. Nautilus does not prompt for a login, so users are always a "guest" and do not have write access 2. SAMBA (at least on Ubuntu) defaults to allowing a "guest" login, and so make files readable to the world, which is not (my) expected behavior, nor is there any obvious way to change this. I assume some combination of the various security and guest settings in smb.conf dictate the final result, but the correct combination is not at all clear to me, and presumably not to an "average" user who doesn't even know the file exists. Problem 2 is not a bug as much as a default configuration issue, but while it exists, problem 1 is a security problem, not just an annoyance.
gnome-vfs got deprecated in 2008. gnome-vfs is not under active development anymore and had its last code changes in 2011. Its codebase has been archived: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Archive/gnome-vfs/commits/master gio (in glib) and gvfs are its successors. See https://developer.gnome.org/gio/stable/ch33.html and https://people.gnome.org/~gicmo/gio-migration-guide/ for porting info. Closing this report as WONTFIX as part of Bugzilla Housekeeping to reflect reality. Feel free to open a task in GNOME Gitlab if the issue described in this task still applies to a recent + supported version of glib/gio/gvfs. Thanks!