Problem with samba shares Ubuntu server 12.04

Question

I'm having a problem with setting up samba share permissions on Ubuntu Server LTS. I've got two shares set up in the smb.conf file. The entries look like this:

[share]
comment = Ubuntu File Server Share
path = "insert real path name here"
browsable = yes
guest ok = no
read only = no
create mask = 0700
group = group1

[media]
comment = Ubuntu File Server Share
path = "insert real path name here"
hide unreadable = yes
browsable = yes
guest ok = no
read only = no
group = group2
create mask = 0700

In the file system I am the owner of all directories related to both of these shares. The [media] share is group-owned by group2, and the [share] is group-owned by group1. For both directories I have file permissions set at 771, where owner and group both have read, write, and execute, but guests have only execute. I have 3 users in the system: myself, my wife, and my mother. I belong to group1 and group2, as does my wife. My mother belongs only to group2. When I log into the server from my Windows desktop, my credentials work as expected. But if I use my wife's or my mother's, nothing works. They can log into the server, but when they click on one of the shared folders another log in screen is displayed asking for another username / password. This always fails and they are not allowed access to the folders.

I would like for my wife and I to have access to both of these folders while restricting access to other users. What am I missing here? I've tried fixing this for quite some time and I can't seem to get it figured out.

Answer 1

I figured it out, I had two problems:

• I didn't realize that a samba password needs to be assigned for each user
• The line group = group1 needed to be changed to write list = @group1

Answer 2

First two places I check for samba-related (permission) errors are:-

/var/log/auth.log
/var/log/samba/*

Your create mask seems to only allow the owner to read, write and execute newly created files and folders. You probably want to add group read and execute permissions, by setting:

create mask = 0750

There is also the directory mask setting, which you would want to explicitly set to 0750 too.. The default is 0000.

directory mask = 0750