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Quick question – I have a server running Ubuntu server edition with SMB server all set up and running. I've set up the main root of the drive to be shared and I've set up a user in /etc/samba/smbusers to say root = "joeflood" so I can sign in as root using the username "joeflood". This works and I have read/write access to the filesystem (yay!). However, if I browse to /home/javawag (my main user home directory), I no longer have write permissions! I can see all the files in there and read them no problem, but writing is a no-go. I'm logged in as root though?! Btw, I can login via SSH and create folders/etc as root in the /home/javawag folder, and they showed up in the SMB mount on my mac too... help!!

Many thanks,

  • Joe
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1 Answer

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There are a number of factors that determine who can write and who cannot write to a share in samba.

First off, sharing out the entire hard drive from your server is a downright stupid thing to do. It may seem convenient but it's really really dangerous. Imagine you get a virus on a PC on your network and it deletes the files on network shares - bang goes your server!

Samba has a [homes] share that automatically shares out the home directories of all the users on the server - you should be using that to access your home directory.

Then you should only share out other specific areas that you need to share out - like a shared data folder, or your /var/www folder for editing websites, etc.

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That's a good point... that said, I only have my mac set up to access it as it has a strong password on it and no guest access... I sort of like having root access via SMB but actually the more I think about it, the less of a problem it is - my web server runs from /home/javawag/www anyway instead of /var/www. I'll look into the homes share actually - just thinking if I was to create folders in /home/javawag under SMB as it's (almost) set up now, they would be owned by root... – Javawag Feb 26 '11 at 17:20
Cool, all set up now, removed root from user list, removed roots password from SMB, added my user and set up the [homes] share. All sorted and up and running, thanks for the advice :D – Javawag Feb 26 '11 at 18:59

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