There are two sets of permissions to consider here:
- the permissions on the Samba share, as specified in smb.conf, and
- the file system permissions on the directory to be shared
Both have to allow access for the directory to become available.
For anonymous access, you will need to map "Bad User" to guest, allow guest access to the share, and make sure the guest account has at least read permissions on the directory. Then you'll have to add your own account to the "valid users" list for the share.
You can handle the read vs. write permissions issue in (at least) two ways:
- Give all users write permissions on the share with the "read only = no" parameter, and control access using Unix permissions on the underlying files and directories
- Specify "read only = yes" on the share, and then list relevant accounts/groups that are to have write access using the "write list = <account> [<account>]" parameter
If you're not using the AD/Domain Controller functionality in Samba, using "write list" is probably the easiest way to accomplish what you want.
Should you find that you need to ask further questions regarding the actual implementation, please post the (sanitized if necessary) contents of
smb.conf as well as the output of
ls -l <directory> for the directory you're trying to share.