Control Windows permissions on Samba share from linux

In order to have all files under a given directory inherit group rights, you need to use the setgid bit on your directory. See this link.

 $ mkdir test
 $ sudo chown raphink.staff test
 $ ls -lhd test
     drwxr-xr-x 2 raphink staff 4.0K 2009-12-21 16:19 test
 $ sudo chmod g+s test # Set the setgid bit
 $ ls -lhd test
     drwxr-sr-x 2 raphink staff 4.0K 2009-12-21 16:21 test
 $ touch test/foo
 $ ls -lh test
     total 0
     -rw-r--r-- 1 raphink staff 0 2009-12-21 16:23 foo

Unfortunately permissions to a share cannot be granted to a computer account; only users. Yes, it looks like you should be able to do that, and the OS allows you to make the entry, but it doesn't actually work like you'd expect.

One way to get around this is, for instance if you're running a script as a scheduled task, is to mount network drive as a specific user who has access to that share, like so:

net use * \\server\share /user:DOMAIN\username

this will use the first-available drive letter (starting at Z: and going backward from XP/2003 on, but starting at the beginning in Win2k).

You can also specify a drive letter as long as it's not in use:

net use u: \\server\share /user:DOMAIN\username

When complete, don't forget to unmount the share with:

net use u: /d

(Note that you can of course test for the presense of the drive's use, or just drop the mount before mounting it, but I leave that to you.)