I am trying to setup a Samba server in a Win2K network.
The server is running and I can see the shares from my Win XP workstation. I can navigate through the directories on the server but when I open a file it always uses Read-only mode.

I used chmod to change the permissions for all files and directories to 'rwxrwxrwx' but I still can't write to the files.

When I check the permissions using the XP station I see write access enabled for all files but not for the directories.

When using ls -l on the server the directory permissions are 'drwxrwxrwx'! How is this possible?

Samba permissions is a kind of "composite" thing. First, you must have the right permission from the Samba's point of view. After that the permissions on filesystem take place.
You are trying to debug just looking at filesystem permissions, and you missed the Samba's permissions.

A samba share on my server looks like:
[sharedFolder]
comment = A shared Folder
path = /export/samba/shared
force group = users
read only = No
create mask = 0660
directory mask = 0770
inherit acls = Yes

In that way, all users that belongs to group users have rw permission on that folder. Of course, the file system permission for this "root" folder (/export/samba/shared) must be 0770 and owned by root:users.

I hope this works for you,

Thanks for your reply. We didn't have the root:group ownership correct. I also adapted the smb.conf file according to your suggestions. Everything works fine now. Thanks again!

Hans