Sep. 11, 2009
I just came across a really strange and *annoying* problem on one of our servers. A while ago I swapped my PC for a Macbook. Up until now I hadn’t noticed that all my files created on our common Samba server could not be modified by others. Once a colleague pointed this out I started investigating the smb.conf file to figure out what was happening.
However, in the configuration file all looked fine and dandy: create mode, directory mode and inherit permissions were all still set. To make really sure I added some of the force options as well. Still, all folders were created with 0755 (drwxr-xr-x) permissions (I had it setup and expected 0750). I thought I was going nuts until I found some other articles outlining the exact same problems and pointing their finger at Mac OS X.
http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-bugs-dist@lists.debian.org/msg657971.html
http://lists.samba.org/archive/samba/2009-June/148518.html
Apparently the servers incorrect setting of ACLs on the directories was due to the umask value on Mac OS X. Going through the article, I found that the following suggested settings fixed the problem for me.
unix extensions = no
force directory security mode = 0770
Once setting unix extensions to no, I had to disconnect and re-connect to the server in order to access my files and from then all directories were created with the correct permissions.
