I'm having a hard time setting up a shared folder accessible by a few users in a particular group.

My setup:
SME Server
WinXP client
Linux (Mandrake 10.1 Community) client

My goal:
Allow 6 users to log onto either machine and have access to their own folder (on SME server) and 4 of the users in a particular group to have access to a common folder.

So far:
SME server is configured with one i-bay (shared folder) accessible to users in the group.
XP machine is working fine.
Mandrake machine, however is not working very well. I've set up the fstab file as follows:

...
//smeserver/user1folder /home/user1/Desktop/User1 smbfs credentials=/etc/samba/auth.smeserver.user1,uid=503,gid=502 0 0
//smeserver/user2folder /home/user2/Desktop/User2 smbfs credentials=/etc/samba/auth.smeserver.user2,uid=504,gid=502 0 0
etc.... for other 4 users
//smeserver/sharedfolder /home/common smbfs user, credentials=/etc/samba/auth.smeserver.user1,exec 0 502
...

The mounted folders on each users desktop is working fine. Appropriate write access is given to the user.
The shared folder (mounted to /home/common), however, is stuck on root/root and group is only given read-only access.

I know that the SME server is configured fine, because the common folder functions properly on the WinXP machine. I've tested by creating a file by one user and then erasing it by another user.

Any suggestions?

You could set the sticky-bit on the group of your folder, and add in your smb.conf, at the point where you defined your share:
ie, set your group to "privUsers" and chmod g+s
this would do the trick for the file permissions....

Still doesn't work. Any other ideas?

FYI ... when I remove that line (for documents share) from fstab and restart, the folder permissions are configured properly. And the permissions on the folder on the server are set up properly as well. It seems that my fstab entry must be problematic. Are there any options I should be setting there to "force" the group?

Thanks again!

The plot thickens!

Still working on this problem and I'm almost there. I can now create directories/files and erase files, but for some reason I can't remove directories. I had to add entries for fmask=760 and dmask=3770 to even have partial write access to the shares. I've done some experimenting and have found the following (if it's any benefit in troubleshooting my problem).

1) If I browse to the SMB share with Konquerer (smb://smeserver/sharedfolder), then I can erase folders. Interestingly, the same folders have different permissions and owners there than when I get properties on the same folders in the mount. I'd just scrap the whole mounting thing altogether, except you can't save directly to SMB shares unless they're mounted - you can only copy files there.

2) I can't unmount any of my SMB shares, even as root.

Thanks for any guidance anyone can provide.

Rob