user rights question

[crokett]

I have apache running. I have samba configured and can browse my linux machine. I want to be able to copy files from my windows machine to the web directory on my linux machine. The share is set up correctly in smb.conf, but local permissions are currently set to 755 on the web directory and I can't write files from windows. I don't want to change the permissions to 777. Is there a way in Linux to manage the users so that my windows user name has write access to the directory without changing permissions? I tried setting the windows username primary group to root, but that did not work.

thanks

[stiles]

Originally posted by crokett:
<STRONG>Is there a way in Linux to manage the users so that my windows user name has write access to the directory without changing permissions? I tried setting the windows username primary group to root, but that did not work.
</STRONG>

Yes, well kinda. ACL's (access control list) do this very well, they alow you to have different permissions for different users on the same file or directory. Problem is you have to migrate to a different filesystem or play with patches to ext2 and the assoiacated utilities (which I have heard is kinda rough around the edges). I use SGI's XFS filesystem for linux and the ACL's work great.

http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/
http://acl.bestbits.at/download.html

[ 27 October 2001: Message edited by: stiles ]

[crokett]

hmmm.... how hard is it to convert the filesystems without losing data?

How about just setting up a new partition that is xfs and using that for the samba stuff? That way I can leave the existing linux install. Can you run xfs and ext2 concurrently?

For now I simply connect to the samba share as root but that is a security risk and I don't want to open the firewall with that enabled. The other idea I had was a shell script via cron run from the linux machine with smbclient to copy the files over whenever I have an update. I figured it would be cool to write, but it would be overkill. I also don't imagine content changing that much either.

[ 27 October 2001: Message edited by: crokett ]

[stiles]

Originally posted by crokett:
<STRONG> hmmm.... how hard is it to convert the filesystems without losing data? </STRONG>

It's not easy to do, but is possible. I think there is a link on the XFS FAQ to a few guides on how to convert to a root XFS filesystem.

Originally posted by crokett:
<STRONG> How about just setting up a new partition that is xfs and using that for the samba stuff? That way I can leave the existing linux install. Can you run xfs and ext2 concurrently?</STRONG>

sure can. Just make sure ext2 and XFS is compiled into your kernel. Easiest way would be to add another disk but there are some ext2 resizing utilities that could help you make some room for an XFS partition.

Originally posted by crokett:
<STRONG>For now I simply connect to the samba share as root but that is a security risk and I don't want to open the firewall with that enabled. The other idea I had was a shell script via cron run from the linux machine with smbclient to copy the files over whenever I have an update. I figured it would be cool to write, but it would be overkill. I also don't imagine content changing that much either.
</STRONG>

The script should work. I think you can have apache follow symlinks, but that's not a great idea.