ex3 share write problem with samba

Hi

Somewhat a newbie here

I have knoppix installed on hard disk
and have it working sharing out / in a simpleton's
way so that I can access everything in my private network.

I can read/write to vfat drive.
I can read my ext3 drive but not write to it.
(Simultaneously, I also run up ssh and fish and can access the ext3 and
read/write using fish.)

So this sounds like some kind of configuration problem inside samba
or something related to it.
No mention of ext3 file system in smb.conf as the / is shared out.

I've tried googling, and followed advise of creating users
and so on, but nothing obvious seem to be working.

Any ideas how I can also write to ext3 partition?

My smb.conf file (simplified) is below:

[global]
# Do something sensible when Samba crashes: mail the admin a backtrace
***panic*action*=*/usr/share/samba/panic-action*%d
***printing*=*cups
***printcap*name*=*cups
***load*printers*=*yes
***guest*account*=*nobody
***invalid*users*=*root
# tried security = share and security = user -> no difference
***security*=*share
***workgroup*=*WORKGROUP
***server*string*=*%h*server*(Samba*%v)

[homes]
***comment*=*Home*Directories
***browseable*=*no
***read*only*=*yes
***create*mask*=*0700
***directory*mask*=*0700

[print$]
***comment*=*Printer*Drivers
***path*=*/var/lib/samba/printers
***browseable*=*yes
***guest*ok*=*no
***read*only*=*yes
***write*list*=*knoppix

[printers]
***printer*admin*=*knoppix
***comment*=*All*Printers
***browseable*=*no
***path*=*/tmp
***printable*=*yes
***public*=*no
***writable*=*no
***create*mode*=*0700

[root]
path = /
public = yes
writable = yes

7 <(E-Mail Removed)> dedi ki:
> Hi
>
> Somewhat a newbie here
>
> I have knoppix installed on hard disk
> and have it working sharing out / in a simpleton's
> way so that I can access everything in my private network.
>
> I can read/write to vfat drive.
> I can read my ext3 drive but not write to it.
> (Simultaneously, I also run up ssh and fish and can access the ext3 and
> read/write using fish.)
>
> So this sounds like some kind of configuration problem inside samba
> or something related to it.
> No mention of ext3 file system in smb.conf as the / is shared out.
--8<--

As samba accesses the shares on behalf of a userid associated with the
connection, I suspect the userid (used by samba) for your connection was
not root, in spite of the fact that you explicitly requested so with
"invalid users=root". There would be other parameters to somewhat
similar effect (IIRC "bad user" or "bad passwd" and several others). When
the association is not obvious, samba takes great pains in determining
which local userid should be associated with the connection request. And
to reflect this behavior, there are several parameters affecting this
process.

Also, samba could have been picky when it is asked to associate a
connection with the root user. It might be rejecting that unconditionally,
or accepting only when explicitly instructed so with another parameter
(like the "no_root_squash" parameter in nfs). Though I never tried root
access with samba so I'm not very sure.

Also changing "read only=yes" to "writable=yes" in [homes] could partially
alleviate the problem. Not an unlimited r/w access as you want, but at
least it would allow r/w access to home directories by legitimate users.

--8<--

HTH
--
Abdullah | aramazan@ |
Ramazanoglu | myrealbox |
________________| D.0.T cöm |

Abdullah Ramazanoglu wrote:

> 7 <(E-Mail Removed)> dedi ki:
>> Hi
>>
>> Somewhat a newbie here
>>
>> I have knoppix installed on hard disk
>> and have it working sharing out / in a simpleton's
>> way so that I can access everything in my private network.
>>
>> I can read/write to vfat drive.
>> I can read my ext3 drive but not write to it.
>> (Simultaneously, I also run up ssh and fish and can access the ext3 and
>> read/write using fish.)
>>
>> So this sounds like some kind of configuration problem inside samba
>> or something related to it.
>> No mention of ext3 file system in smb.conf as the / is shared out.
> --8<--
>
> As samba accesses the shares on behalf of a userid associated with the
> connection, I suspect the userid (used by samba) for your connection was
> not root, in spite of the fact that you explicitly requested so with
> "invalid users=root". There would be other parameters to somewhat
> similar effect (IIRC "bad user" or "bad passwd" and several others). When
> the association is not obvious, samba takes great pains in determining
> which local userid should be associated with the connection request. And
> to reflect this behavior, there are several parameters affecting this
> process.
>
> Also, samba could have been picky when it is asked to associate a
> connection with the root user. It might be rejecting that unconditionally,
> or accepting only when explicitly instructed so with another parameter
> (like the "no_root_squash" parameter in nfs). Though I never tried root
> access with samba so I'm not very sure.
>
> Also changing "read only=yes" to "writable=yes" in [homes] could partially
> alleviate the problem. Not an unlimited r/w access as you want, but at
> least it would allow r/w access to home directories by legitimate users.
>
> --8<--
>
> HTH

Thanks for your help - it got me thinking and finally the problem was
solved...

First looked in /var/logs/samba/nmbd.log and smbd.log
From there I can see 'nobody' was logging in and trying to
get access to the share.
Googled around for a bit on 'nobody' and found this link
http://www.winnetmag.com/Windows/Art...53/pg/3/3.html

Then I went to my machine and did
chown -R nobody /mnt/hda2
and voila! I can write to hda2 (which is an ext3 partition)
So it was something to do with connection through a user named nobody
and ownership of ext3 files and directories. Naturally
vfat doesn't have ownership thus that was why I was
writing to that OK while ext3 was not. Now everything is fine.

phew!

Thanks