Have a Windows box as main work PC. Have Linux box, booting from flashdrive, as container for all my backup drives. I want a 1-to-1 relationship betwenn in-use drive and backupdrive, not a RAID system.

If I use will user have full read/write access to sda1 and sda2?

Here, user is the Windows box logging into the Linux box.

What I need is that if I mount sda1, from the Windows box I should be able to read, write, create folders, move folders, create sub-folders, etc. as I please.

chown changes the ownership.
chmod changes the permissions.
See the manpages for how to use these.

You need to set up samba in order to share files between linux and windows hosts. What you can do with that share will depend on how you have set up samba.

Edit: I should also mention that
will only set the user ownership, not the group ownership.
will change both.

Don't quite understand your question. Is Windows accessing a Samba share on the Linux box? or are mounting the Linux disk in Windows?

fukawi1: I have Samba installed, connecting just fine, and from the Windows box I can browse the contents of sda1.

ongte: Windows is accessing a Samba share on the Linux box.

Let me explain things this way. Windows box has 2 drives for data, call them Data1 and Data2. Both 1TB. In the Linux box I have 2 1TB drives, also called Data1 and Data2. The idea is to regularly make Linux/Data1 and Linux/Data2 look exactly the same as Windows/Data1 and Windows/Data2 by running SyncToy on the Windows box. This means full read/write access from Windows box to Linux/Data1 and Linux/Data2.

Using chmod doesn't really help, becuse it only works on the files and folders that are on Linux/Data1 and Linux/Data2 at the time of running it. This means that if a sub-folder is added, chmod needs to be run before a sub-folder can be added.

I need full read/write access for ever and ever.

I mount Linux/Data1 and LinuxData2 to /mnt/sda1 and /mnt/sda2.

Used
and in smb.conf
This gives me read/write permission to /mnt, but I need read/write permission williy-nilly to /mnt/sda1 and /mnt/sda2.

Haven't created any groups.

Hove this clarifies my problem.

you probably need to extend your samba config to include more options.
Create Mask springs to mind, where files/directories created via the share, are created with a particular set of permissions.

The manpage for smb.conf will have a list of them with descriptions.

This is wrong too..

I ahve had a look at a manpage for smb.conf and saw CreateMash, but I can't say that the info really sunk in:-). Will go through it again with a view to it helping this particular problem.

The [nigel-pc] entry in smb.conf came from a tutorial. I think the idea is that each user who logs on gets his own home folder.

Will go through smb.conf masks and report my success/failure.

Success!!!

First step was to use chmod on /dev/sda1 and then mount it.

Also added masks to smb.conf and now have full access.

Thanks.

It has all gone downhill again. Firstly, it was odd that Windows was not asked for a password to login. Copied a btach of files, and it did a lot of them and suddenly, half-way through, decided I didn't have the required permissions. Noe despite rebooting both ends, it still doesn't ask for a password and still refuses to allow file copying.

Wanted to do the setup from scratch again, but now rpcclient won't even let me do enumusers, says I must do lsaquery first. This also fails.

I have been struggling for 2 weeks now to set up a Linux box as a file-server and I get nowhere fast. Everytime I get past one stage something else goes wrong again.

It would be nice to have a tutorial on using Linux as a file server where you share more than just one folder.

At the moment I can do nothing because rpcclient won't let me do anything. I'd just trash the whole project if I hadn't already spent so much money on the equipment.