How does directory access/permissions work on omv smb shares ?

  • System info



    Hi


    I have an external usb drive formatted with fat32 for which I have created an smb share, with a view to being able to access from windows and linux.


    From a linux system I mount the drive with a command like:

    Code
    sudo mount -v -t cifs -o vers=3.0,user=<username> //<omvipaddress>/transcendroot /mnt/transcend


    All seems to work except I am having problems with permissions and am strugging to understand how the access works.


    I notice that with fat32 the 'user' is always root (presumably because fat32 does not support user permissions). As such when ever I copy or create directories on the disk from a linux machine I must use sudo and the resultant files/directories are all root.

    Also, however, the permissions on the files/directories are all drwxr-xr-x (even if I create a directopry owned as root and chmoded to 777 on the linux box before copying). Attempting to change the permissions in a 'nix way by using chown has no effect.


    This means I am unable to cretate directories with write access for a user. I have set the smb shared folder permissions for <username> to be read/write. but this does not seem to make any difference.


    Does anyone know what is happening as regards permissions/access here ?

    Does anyone know how I can set things up so a directory has write access for all users on an smb share ?

    Do I have to set some special settings in smb to get (non-root) writable directories ?

    • Official Post

    I have an external usb drive formatted with fat32 for which I have created an smb share, with a view to being able to access from windows and linux.

    fat32 is a format for Microsoft file systems. It is not linux and does not support linux permissions. You can use it for backups but nothing else.

    A data drive to create shared folders in OMV must use a native Linux file system. EXT4, BTRFS, ...

    You won't be able to solve those problems any other way.

  • Ok. Thank you for your reply.


    I thought I might at least beable to get things such that I can access as root, but that reply sounds pretty definitive.


    I'll reformat to ext4. I assume this does not prevent me from using smb file sharing ?

  • Ok. Thank you for your reply.


    I thought I might at least beable to get things such that I can access as root, but that reply sounds pretty definitive.


    I'll reformat to ext4. I assume this does not prevent me from using smb file sharing ?

    non-linux file systems don't support linux permissions, and a server expects to be in full control of it's storage, which it can't do if it can't deal with permissions.


    samba when implementd on linux acts as a middle man between the server's linux file system and the windows/mac/bsd/linux client, and translates the access requests and permissions.


    The storage needs to be in a format that the servers uses, not a format the client uses.

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