I am attempting to create a standalone Samba file server with user-level security for shared directories residing on a separate data partition. The problem is that some users cannot access shares on that partition even though they have full group rwx permissions.
My initial thought was to create a network share at /srv/shares but that is not on the correct partition, so I have been attempting to create a share of a directory on the data partition (nwk-data) currently mounted at /media/bill. This has not been successful.
I have considered editing fstab to mount the data partition nwk-data to /srv but am not certain that would matter: Shares created for testing purposes at various mount points above, at, and below the data partition's mount point succeed or fail depending on whether they are on that partition.
Configuration:
Samba 4.3 on Ubuntu Desktop 16.04
Two users (bill, debra) and one group (sambausers, of which bill and debra are members).
Three volumes: (a) backup HDD; (b) system volume; (c) data volume. Data volume has three partitions: sdc1 [reserved], sdc2 [reserved], sdc3 [nwk-data]; all three are mounted to /media/bill. [nwk-data] is the data partition.
Ownership for /media is root:sambausers (chown -R root:sambausers /media).
Permissions for /media are rwx for owner and group (chmod -R 770 /media).
Two client laptops. Each is Windows 7 and each has accounts/users Bill and Debra.
Passwords are identical for each user on all three machines (server and two laptops).
The main share is [users] at /media/bill/nwk-data/users (root:sambausers) (rwx for owner and group).
/media is shared [media] for test purposes (root:sambausers) (rwx for owner and group).
/media/bill is shared [bill] for test purposes (root:sambausers) (rwx for owner and group).
/media/bill/nwk-data is shared [nwk-data] for test purposes (root:sambausers) (rwx for owner and group).
Additional share [test] created for test purposes at /srv/shares (root:sambausers) (rwx for owner and group).
Additional share [bshare] created for test purposes at /media/bshare (root:sambausers) (rwx for owner and group).
What works:
- Bill can access all shares from both laptops using his credentials.
- Debra can access all shares from both laptops using Bill's credentials.
- Debra can access [test], [bshare], and [media] from both laptops using her credentials.
What doesn't work:
- Debra can't access [bill], [nwk-data], or [users] or any of the latter's subdirectories from either laptop using her credentials.
I have tinkered for three days with the smb.conf file, ownership, and permissions with no effect.
The problem seems to be in getting access to subdirectories of /media. I'm not sure what the hangup is. It might be an ACL issue although I know nothing of this topic. Any thoughts about what the issue might be, and even better how to fix it, would be greatly appreciated.