How do I set read/write permissions on a Raspberry Pi set up as a network storage device?

Question

I've followed the ff instructions on how to set up a Raspberry Pi as a simple network storage device:

How to Turn a Raspberry Pi into a Low-Power Network Storage Device

However I ran into a problem at the step after setting up permissions. I assumed adding this to samba.conf would set up the permissions:

[Backup]
comment = Backup Folder
path = /media/USBHDD1/shares
valid users = @users
force group = users
create mask = 0660
directory mask = 0771
read only = no

Unfortunately, no luck. The authentication steps afterward allowed readonly access to the storage device, but not write/modify access.

Any clues on what could be the problem?

Answer 1

Read up on chmod and chown. For example you can use chmod to do this:

chmod g+rwx /media/USBHDD1/shares

This allows any user who is part of the same group as the owner of the shares folder to read, write & execute the contents of the shares folder.

Answer 2

As Jake pointed out, you should check the permissions of the folders that you want to share with other users.

chmod is the command which allows you to control which users and groups can read, write or execute data from the specified folder.

Basically the permissions goes as follows drwxrwxrwx where the D stands for Directory, the R stands for Read permission, the W stands for Write permission and the X stands for Execute permission. The first three RWX are for the Owner of the file/folder, the second three RWX are for the Owner Group and the third three RWX are for all others.

You can check other info from the built-in manual or here

Captain_WD.