I have Ubuntu 11.04 installed on one PC and would like to share a folder with another PC with Windows XP installed. When I click on the folder in the Ubuntu PC and select
Share this folder
I get a message
Sharing service is not installed. You need to install the Windows networks sharing service in order to share you folders.
When I select this I select the following messages.
This is you last opportunity to look through the list of marked changes before they are applied.
Warning. You are about to install software that can't be authenticated! Doing this could allow a malicious individual to damage or take control of your system.

Is this the best way to share folders securely?

Many thanks in advance for any assistance,
Peter.

Where have you got Synaptics package manager pointed? What repos? They should point at Ubuntu repos.

To do network sharing as you know it from windoze, you install samba server on the ubuntu system. It has to be configured. I would recommend you follow a tutorial to get started.

Here is one -->Basic Samba Network File Sharing

or this one, -->Down-and-dirty Samba is UP --- NOW

Both are on this board, look at the top for the Tutorial link, follow it to Networking, both entries are there.

Is it secure? Well, that all depends on how you set samba up. You can make it relatively secure, if you set it up with user ID's and passwords. Its hackable, however your risks are no greater than they are on windbloze.

The next thing to consider is just how are the files on the two systems to be used? If all you need is to copy files back and forth, then ftp will do that, or scp through ssh if you want a secure, un-hackable connection.

If you want to open a remote file and edit it, then you need samba, since windies doesn't support NFS for free. Linus to linux you can use NFS, easier to set up than samba, not any more secure though.

Security is an ongoing process you have to administer; on any system. If you are behind a firewall, samba with user ID's and passwords is usually enough. No firewall, and your shorts are down...

Thank you for your reply. I have read through the tutorials and have started to set up samba as outlined here. One question that I had about that is that after calling
I get this error message:

WARNING: The following packages cannot be authenticated.
libwbclient0 smbclient samba-common samba.

Is that a problem?

I am hosting a web site from home. The php files call executables from code written in C++. I do not want hackers to be able to reverse engineer the executables. So I was thinking of putting all of the executables, and some of the php files, on the Ubuntu box. The only access to this bow will be from the XP web server through a LinkSys router. The XP web server is port forwarded to the Internet through port 80. The user will upload files that are checked to see if they are the right format and do not contain any malware. If the files are OK, they will be stored on the Ubuntu box. The user may call analysis options which access the executables through the php files. The user may then download the results of the analysis, again by choosing options in the php files.

Any assistance with this would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your help to date.

Peter.

No, it means you did not get the 'keys' with the packages to verify their authenticity. I have see this message, and never worried about it, since I'm pointed at servers I trust. Canonicals servers.

Well, I don't think I know enough to recommend one method over another. That said, If you can set up Samba, it will allow you to move the files back and forth.