Files Saved to Local Machine Via Sambashare Are Set to Nobody:Nobody Access

[SillySod]

I have a little network set up with Sambashare areas on the main machine. The problem is that when one of the remote machines creates or updates a file in the Sambashare area on the main machine, the file is set to owner and group access of "nobody".

Then when I try to access files in the Sambashare area on the main machine, they are only available to me as read-only. The only solution I have is to reset the permissions on the main machine using chown or chmod recursively, but that's far from ideal.

How can I stop the remote machines from changing the access/permissions on the files stored on the main machine?

[ahallubuntu]

You can choose the group and user for a share in your smb.conf file, with these fields (change create mask/directory mask to your preference):

[MyShare]
comment = My Share
#other fields here for the share
path = /shares/MyShare
force user = thisuser
force group = thisgroup

[SillySod]

Thanks for the quick reply, is smb.conf on the local machine or remote machine? And whereabouts?

[ahallubuntu]

The smb.conf you want is on the server - wherever the files are that you are accessing.

/etc/samba/smb.conf

That assumes you have setup the Samba server there deliberately vs. just enabling sharing on some specific folder. In that case, I don't know how to do it - there must be a smb.conf file elsewhere.

[SillySod]

Thanks, it is in the place you said.

I think actually what I needed to do more than the force user/group thing was to set the change mask to 0755 so that the files have group rw access. That way I can do what I want with them without them opening as read-only on the server machine (and without getting an error in Lightning when I change something in the shared calendar on the server machine after it has been updated by a remote machine).

I think I've fixed it but I will test a bit further over the weekend and hoepfully come back to mark the thread as solved.

[SillySod]

I have come across the next problem already, this always happens as well.

If I create a new file or folder in a Sambashare area on the server machine, it sets the group permission to read only, so I can't edit the file or create any further sub folders remotely.

How do I set it to give group rw access to any new file or folder created on the server in the Sambashare area?

[bab1]

I have come across the next problem already, this always happens as well.

If I create a new file or folder in a Sambashare area on the server machine, it sets the group permission to read only, so I can't edit the file or create any further sub folders remotely.

How do I set it to give group rw access to any new file or folder created on the server in the Sambashare area?

The default umask for current versions of Ubuntu is 022. This allows permissions to be st at 775 for directories and 664 for all files.

You can test the umask settings with this terminal command

umask

...what do you get? What version of Ubuntu are you running?

The correct umask setting only solves part of the problem. If you are going to have multiple users accessing the share you will need to provide a reliable way to provide for a common group for the users via the file system. Do you think you might need that?

[SillySod]

I experimented with umask yesterday, it was initially set to 022. I changed it to 077 following advice from a website, but that made things worse.

Then I decided it might need to be the same as "change mask" in the smb.conf file, so I set it to 0775 in my /etc/profile and this ruined everything - when I tried to log back in, I got a message saying the X server could not start due to an access problem, and I had to edit /etc/profile back to 022 from a terminal login using vi!

After that I set umask to 002, which appears to have done the trick.

This may have relaxed things a bit too far, but it doesn't really matter as I am only dealing with a home network so the only user is me.