No Write privileges when using Samba Version 2.0 with old Mac-formatted USB drive

[mbaker]

Hoping to get some help on this immediate issue as well as to better understand the technical knowledge around this in general...

Short version: I think I have a unix permissions issue with an external drive plugged into an Asus 68U router (and that is shared using Samba 2) which prevents users who mount to it from having write privileges even though they have been given such privileges in the Router config page. So how do I set and propagate the correct permissions to the relevant folders? I've worked out how to ssh into the router but that's as far as I've got.

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Long version
Trying to get an external USB3.0 HD drive that used to be connected directly to my Mac, now set up on my Asus Router running Merlin 384.14_2 so that I can mount it from my MacBooks as well as a Raspberry Pi within the same LAN. I've managed to get everything working using Samba 1 but having read the universal warnings everywhere about using this version, I'm trying to get it to work using Samba 2.

The USB drive has 2 data partitions, created in Mac OS, both formatted to Mac OS Extended (Journaled), which I believe is HFS+. Data on both partitions was written to it from a Mac. I have ticked the option "Ignore ownership on this volume" from Mac OS for both partitions.

A samba username/password has been set up, newtest1, within the Router config page, with R/W permission selected for all folders shown for this user. Despite this, when mounting to the drive using Samba version 2 using these credentials, the Samba client is unable to write to the folder.

If however I create a new dummy folder on the USB Drive from the Router GUI config page (there is an option to add a folder), then THIS folder IS correctly writable from the Samba client.

I have SSH'd into the router and navigated to the USB Drive and a simple ls -l shows there is a difference between the two folders ("ForCCC" is the existing folder that was created when the drive was connected to the Mac, "AsusMade" is the dummy folder created from the Asus Router GUI config page).

drwxrwxrwx 1 admin root 5 Feb 5 11:25 AsusMade
drwxr-xr-x 1 502 root 5 Feb 5 11:14 ForCCC

So I'm guessing the issue is "ForCCC" only has read-only permissions set (despite the GUI saying otherwise) and needs to have read/write permissions set. I am not sure how to do this correctly in this context and how to make sure the folders below "ForCCC" are also read/writable in line with the permissions set in the Router GUI config page.

Grateful for pointers and any corrections on my understanding of the issue - I'm still a relative novice when it comes to networking and unix sysadmin stuff.

 

[Wade Coxon]

If you want the permissions to match then you'd chown and shmod the ForCCC directory.

The ForCCC directory is missing write permissions for its user and group (the r-x bits should be rwx ... read write execute)

ownership

chown admin:root ForCCC

then permissions

chmod 777 ForCCC
or chmod +w ForCCC

 

[mbaker]

If you want the permissions to match then you'd chown and shmod the ForCCC directory.

The ForCCC directory is missing write permissions for its user and group (the r-x bits should be rwx ... read write execute)

ownership

chown admin:root ForCCC

then permissions

chmod 777 ForCCC
or chmod +w ForCCC

Many thanks for the tip.

Does that propagate the change down to the sub-folders as well though? Also, any idea why the Router GUI config page setting (of R/W) doesn't work - I'm thinking if I want to change it in the future to different permissions for different users, where I need to do this (GUI or command line).

 

[RMerlin]

Add the -R flag to make it recursive.

chmod -R 777 FourCC

 

[mbaker]

Add the -R flag to make it recursive.

chmod -R 777 FourCC

Thanks to both of you!