I have a samba file server, and I just ran a cron job which threw a LOT of can't set permissions errors, so I checked the folders, and somehow they have nobody as the owner user, but the group is correct. I have the following setup in smb.conf for the share. Did I do something wrong or miss a setting? I want the owner to be MyUser:MyGroup on anything the users copy up to the server.

force user = MyUser
force group = MyGroup
create mask = 0764
directory mask = 0776
writeable = yes
guest ok = yes
guest only = yes

Hi there,

well, that was a tough one. This is formally okay, and at a cursory glance, it all looks correct. So I tried it out and got results similar to what you described: Files created in this share where owned by "nobody", but the group was set as desired. Weird. I have to add, though, that I've never used guest shares yet, let alone guest only.

After criss-crossing the Samba manual I found that the directives "force user" and "force group" conflict with "guest only". You can't use them together. Instead, you have to use the "guest account" directive to specify the Unix user in whose name a guest will access the files (no need to set the group explicitly then). That will replace both "force user" and "force group".

The default value for "guest account", by the way, is "nobody". Tadaa! ;-)

[X] Doc CPU

Great find! Thank you! What I was really trying to accomplish with my settings though was for people usinf both windows 7 and OSX to be able to connect to the share without being prompted for any credentials, for it to just log them into the share as that forced user and group.
So should I just remove the two guest settings then?

Hi there,

it was pretty obvious what you wanted. ;-)

I'm not sure if you meant the right thing here.
Just dump the two "force" directives (but keep "guest ok" and "guest only") and add "guest account = MyUser" instead. That should do the trick.

[X] Doc CPU

At least I was clear haha

So if I set guest account on that share will that then put that owner and group I need on the files?

It would set the group since that's the group the owner belongs to, right?

Hi there,

yes, it sets the group to the chosen owner's primary one. I guess that's what you wanted anyway.

However, as you've seen with your initial config, the "force group" directive does take effect even though it probably isn't supposed to be. So if you need a different group to be set, you might still leave the "force group" directive there. I wouldn't like it, though.

[X] Doc CPU

Finally got some down time to do this. When I comment out the two forces and add
guest account = MyAccount
to the share section of the smb.conf, I get the following error from testparm and it doesn't work.

Global parameter guest account found in service section!

But if I add it to the global section, testparm is happy and when I copy a file in, it gets the proper user and group.

Why would it not work when I add it into the share section of smb.conf? I checked and guest account isn't anywhere else in the file.