I've inherited a system running FC5 with a couple of NAS drives connected over CIFS. I thought CIFS preserved file ownership, permissions, and file details on copy, but that doesn't seem to be the case. (Everything gets saved as "root".) Wondering if this is:

1. A problem with the old FC5 distro?
2. A problem with my fstab?
3. A problem with the fact that I don't really understand how Samba/CIFS works.

Here's my fstab:

//nas-01/staging /nas-01 cifs defaults 0 0

Note that no authentication is required to save to "staging" on nas-01.

Look here:
http://www.lunix.com.au/tag/tip-linux-cifs-mount/

Notice how you can specify the user to bind as. You haven't done that.

Thanks. So this means that all files will be saved as per the specified uid / gid, right? Is there anyway to make the NAS aware of all users as defined in /etc/passwd and preserver ownership / permissions. Example, if I copy a file from the main drive, I want the owner and permissions to be the same on the NAS.

It probably has to do with how the nas works then your client configuration. The uid= & gid= options will be used as a fallback if cifs isn't supported.

My guess is that it doesn't really support cifs. What kind of device is it? Can you create users? If you don't have a way of adding users & coordinating credentials as with a samba server, then it may not provide you with the support you want.

Another possibility is it uses the equivalent of "force user" and "force group" for guest shares.

What's the underlying file system? fat or ntfs won't store this info because they simply lack the needed structures to do so. So permissions and ownershipts are not really saved, they are emulated at mount time.

It's a Buffalo TerraStation. Supports user and group management.

Does one have to match user/group settings on the NAS to whatever exists in /etc/passwd?

Looks like it's XFS (?), with which I'm not familiar.

Oh, then that shouldn't be the problem. XFS supports the unix permissions scheme.

The username/password for Samba/Windows probably need to match for a cifs mount. I'm curious if you can use smbpasswd remotely to change credentials on the buffalo nas the way you can for a regular samba server.

One possibility is that the NAS runs as root and has a 'bad user = root' or 'bad user = guest' option for a globally accessible share. The use of XFS indicates that your NAS is probably running either Linux or BSD, which use the Samba server. I believe that the Buffalo NAS runs Linux internally. Often embedded devices have a scaled down linux (such as uCLinux) which runs everything as root and doesn't have regular users. If this is the case, it may use Windows styled (smbpasswd) credentials for access but only have one user that files are saved as (the root user).

If I were you, I would try mounting the share using credentials. For example, you can create a credentials file (e.g. ~/.credentials) in your home directory with the contents:
username=<your_user_name>
password=<your_password>

If your network uses a domain, then also include "domain=<domain_name>" in the file.

Then in your /etc/passwd file, include the options "user,cred=/home/<yourusername>/.credentials,uid=yourusername".

The uid option is optional for cifs, and is a fallback when smbfs is supported by the server. See if mounting with your credentials allows permissions to be preserved. If the credentials are different for the nas then on your Linux system, then include those instead in your credentials file.

Good Luck.

Awesome, thanks. I will experiment with credentials.

Cool. What about EXT2, EXT3?

They are THE native linux file systems. Of course they have no problem with that either.

I just suggested that because a lot of hardware comes with a fat or ntfs file system, which are windows native file systems and do not support these things. But neither of ext2/3/4, reiser*, xfs, jfs and many others should be a problem. They all are ok for the purpose.

Why use Cifs over NFS?