How to access other users' folders?

[Octopuss]

My own user account on the NAS is used like the secondary root or something. It would be very useful for me if I could see other users' folders to check the state of the automated backups.
(it's family server, nothing work related or anything)

Is it doable somehow?

 

[dlavigne]

Did you find a solution for this?

 

[Octopuss]

Nope.

 

[Octopuss]

Bump.
I really need this.
Wife has just overwritten a file, but since she is in her office, she can't access her backup herself. Now I could really use access to everything on the server.

 

[Christian_128]

Hi,
try to use group on the your user and add it every where, it will be possible to go on all user folder with that.
If you want more secure, built a new user with all right, and add them on all group you have. this user will be use too for make backup or other automated action. and your root account will not be use.

 

[Octopuss]

Do you mean add my admin user's group to other users, or the other way around?

 

[Glorious1]

Maybe the easiest thing is to add your user to all the groups that you or others have created (Accounts > Groups). The group usually has permission to see an item. Then you don't have to change any permissions.

Go to Accounts > Groups and make a list of the necessary groups. Then Users > your_user > Edit > Auxiliary Groups, just add the comma-separated list there.

 

[Octopuss]

That doesn't work.
I can still only see my user's folder in Explorer.

 

[Glorious1]

It might be a Windows SMB thing, which I don't use, so maybe someone else would have to advise you.
If it were me, I would ssh into the machine and check permissions, user and group on a test item.

 

[Glorious1]

Try it a different way. Open one of the groups (Accounts > Groups > Members) and add yourself there.

 

[Octopuss]

Doesn't work. That's basically the same thing as before anyway...

 

[Octopuss]

Seriously, noone knows?

 

[Glorious1]

I didn't get much positive response from my previous attempts to help you, but I'll try one more time. I'm telling you that what I suggested works for me. I have access to all the datasets on the server, even those owned by someone else.

What you might be missing is that the permissions, and group ownership have to be applied to the dataset. And if it's existing content, you have to apply them retroactively and recursively before the group permissions will let you see it. Also go into the share and make sure the default file and directory permissions for group are what you need. If that doesn't work, it must be a Windows/Samba issue.

 

[Octopuss]

Well, nothing you suggested made any difference. Adding my user to other users' groups didn't work, and neithe did the opposite.
I am not sure I can mess around with folder permissions on Windows level, because for that I'd need to physically see the folders I want to make accessible to the main user, which means I'd have to log in as one of the regular users first, and I don't think they have relevant permissions to change that stuff as a catch.

 

[Glorious1]

I'm talking about applying permissions and group ownership in the FreeNAS gui, not in Windows.

 

[Octopuss]

That's exactly what doesn't work.

 

[Octopuss]

I thought about this today and sure enough, I attempted this in past.
I was wondering if anything relevant changed with TrueNAS 12 which I run now.

Basically, I have user octopuss, user2 and user3.
All of their home folders are being accessed from Windows and the sole purpose is to store the users' data backups, so it's all Samba.
Each user has obviously his own group.
There is /mnt/pool1/users dataset and "users" share of "Private SMB datasets and shares" type (I presume that is the most suitable type for this).
The dataset is owned by root and controlled by wheel (this is probably the default but I don't remember since it's been ages since I installed the system).
Each user is in its own group.

When I open the \\nas in Windows, I see users folder.
What I would like to achieve is seeing octopuss, user2 and user3 folders underneath that, but I feel like this is impossible by design no matter how I set the permissions since the octopuss folder is set as home in the user settings on the NAS, so technically the root folder of the users dataset I can see is in fact one level below.
Is that thinking correct, and if so, is there any way around that?

One bottom line question: when setting home folder permissions on the edit user page, what group do the group checkboxes apply to? The primary or the auxiliary, or something different?

 

[Glorious1]

The question is unclear. You say you open it in Windows and see the users folder, then you say you can only see one level below that. You probably have your share set for your home user folder: octopuss. You need to change it to start one level up, in 'users', if you want to see that. Also, you would probably have to make sure you are in the wheel group.

 

[Octopuss]

I think that answers the question.

Can you comment on the home folder permissions thing by chance?

 

[KrisBee]

@Octopuss Have a look at the first reply from @anodos in this thread: https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/acl-dataset-setup.90093/#post-623782 Option 1 or option2 could work for you. Be clear about the distinction between folders and datasets.