Making a share visible only to members of a group

[Onno Zweers]

Hi all (and hopefully also someone of the samba team),

I want a shared directory to be visible only to the members of a group, and 
to no one else. Instead, a shared directory is either visible to everyone 
(browseable=yes) or to no-one (browseable=no). When a non-authorised user 
enters the shared directory, she gets an error message. That's good. But 
since the user cannot use the share anyway, I want her not to see the share 
in the list.

In the newsgroup comp.protocols.smb they told me it was not possible. I 
have considered using a clever "include" statement, but it seems not 
possible to make an include depend on user ID. In the FAQ, the HowTo en the 
man pages I found no solution, and not even a mention of this problem.

Is such browseable-by-group behaviour really is not supported? Is there any 
chance it will be supported in the future?

I have worked as a programmer, and I think it would be a small effort to 
create a smb.conf statement like:
     browseable-by-group = @groupname
or:
     browseable = @groupname
or:
     browseable = valid users
to make sure only members of a certain group see the share listed. It would 
enhance useability of Samba, and it would take away the only advantage of 
Windows NT server (IMHO). I would like to help to program this option, but 
I have no experience in programming for Linux environments, except for some 
super simple shell scripts.

Is it difficult to start programming for Linux/Samba, for someone with 
Windows programming experience? What is the best start for such an undertaking?

Onno
--
Onno Zweers, automatisering      mailto:onno at verweij.com
Verweij Fashion BV                http://www.verweij.com