SOLVED Not Able to Write to a CIFS share from Win or Lin

[mhumm2]

Folks, I'm struggling to setup my new FreeNAS box. I was unable to write from Win or Kubuntu into a CIFS share so I blew it all away and finished installing all three 2TB drives. Now I have one big RAIDZ volume and I'm trying to figure out the FreeNAS permissions.

Here's is what I want:

6 folders (shares?) 3 of them are user folders that need to allow only 1 specific user in automatically (no pw). These user folders shouldn't even be seen by the other users on their machines. Then 3 other folders that all users can use (read, write, execute). Root, of course has full access to everything from the FreeNAS gui.

I've been studying the FreeNAS guide, but it's just not clicking for some reason. Perhaps it uses too many assumptions that I'm at a level of understanding that I'm not. I have no created a Dataset yet because I think that's where the permission magic happens. Please advise.

 

[pirateghost]

Use datasets for your users. Do not use 'folders'

 

[mhumm2]

Okay. I've been doing a lot of searching and reading trying to find the answers to my questions without success. The parts of the guide I understand go into much more detail than I need, while other parts barely mention things that I don't know how to handle. So, with the goals I stated in the original post...

Volume-1 created owner: root, Owner (group): wheel, permission type: Unix

Now I create datasets (folders) for the users (Thank you pirateghost).
The first dataset will be mine, as a user, mark, and group: mark.
Compression level: Inherit (off) I don't want compression.
I kept case sensitivity. What is atime? I set it to Inherit (on)
What is ZFS Deduplication? I set it to Inherit (off). In ZFS Raid Z1 I should already have duplication based on the RAID configuration of 5. Created dataset: mark.

From my Kubuntu Network, I see freenas only. I'd like to paste a screenshot here, but no joy. Perhaps a NAS reboot would help... No, I still don't see mark. I can see:
Network > freenas (admin and storage as two entries on the same level). That's it, there's nothing below freenas.

General question: if a user using Win7 wanted to share a photo (jpg) with me, on my Kubuntu machine, what type of folder would she copy it to, (CIFS, Unix, Mac)?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[pirateghost]

When creating a dataset, just keep the defaults. Compression isn't a bad thing BTW.

Zfs raid does NOT provide you with duplication... It provides parity. There is a difference. Deduplication, is something you need to research, as I can't type it out on my phone. Let's just say you don't have the hardware for it.

What do you mean by 'no joy'? Are you logged into the share with your user account 'mark'?

Did you actually SHARE out with CIFS your dataset? Your datasets are NOT visible on the network unless you share them out using CIFS(or any other method you prefer)

If a user wants to share files you use CIFS as its supported on every OS

 

[mhumm2]

pirateghost, I think we're beginning to crack the ice. Please pardon the "no joy" remark. That's a term from the Air Force days that means, "it didn't work." Okay, I figured out how to share the dataset Mark, but, from my computer, it prompts me for a username and pw. I went back and changed permissions of Mark to allow guests. That fixed the username, pw prompt, but I'm back to the original problem -- I cannot write to the dataset/folder.

 

[pirateghost]

Because your permissions on that dataset are set to root:wheel. Where is your 'mark' user? What group does it belong to?

Think about it this way:
Your dataset permissions allow others to read the data, but not write to it. Remember the permissions on the dataset? Go look at them. Pay attention to the check boxes.

 

[mhumm2]

Mark user belongs to the mark group. The permissions on the dataset "Mark" are set to owner: mark, group: mark. Permission type, Unix. All check boxes are checked.

BTW, you also mentioned that "I don't have the hardware for that." Forgive me, I cited the specs of my Kubuntu system, not the NAS. I've since corrected that as my signature now cites the NAS box.

 

[pirateghost]

No. You don't have the hardware for deduplication on your nas.

 

[mhumm2]

Good enough, I just didn't want to provide bad information and expect good answers. Man, you're fast with the replies.

 

[pirateghost]

Ha. I'm sitting here enjoying my 'morning' monster while tapatalking on my phone.

 

[mhumm2]

Okay, as long as you keep the advice coming, but don't touch the monster, it might go off! <grin>

 

[mhumm2]

Okay, playing with the user accounts, and groups does affect whether or not I can write to a dataset. I'm still not sure which setting is the one, but I'll narrow it down eventually. The issue now is access. How can I allow access to datasets intended for specific users while hiding those datasets from other users on the network?

 

[pirateghost]

Okay, playing with the user accounts, and groups does affect whether or not I can write to a dataset. I'm still not sure which setting is the one, but I'll narrow it down eventually. The issue now is access. How can I allow access to datasets intended for specific users while hiding those datasets from other users on the network?

You can't 'hide' them. You set your permissions accordingly for your network circumstances. This is something you need to spend some time playing with to figure out what works for your environment.

If permissions are set correctly, you will have access to everything you need based on your group and permissions. Others won't see IN the directories they don't have access to. They can just see the share name.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Not to add to the confusion but if you use the cifs home directory setting you can kind of hide shares from users. They would just mount a special share called homes for example and that would redirect them to their user directory based on the username used to authenticate. This would be a more advanced setting though and most people don't use it.

 

[mhumm2]

Great posts! Yes, SweetAndLow, I had that happen when I set one of the Datasets to "use as Home"

Am I correct to say that the only way FreeNAS any user is by that user logging in? That means each user will have to correctly complete the login screen. For shared folders (Datasets, sorry pirateghost), I won't need to initiate a login.

 

[SweetAndLow]

For any share that requires authentication they will have to login. Once they have done it the first time they shouldn't have to do it until they reboot again. Also if their windows password matches their freenas user password they will not be prompted for a password at all. It will just know to use the windows password. Your question didn't quite make sense to me so I hope I explained some things.

 

[mhumm2]

That's exactly what I was hoping for, the FreeNAS would be able to get the username and pw from the OS. No, SweetAndLo that was the perfect answer. I was surprised not to find a guide for a newbie setting up FreeNAS 9.3 for the first time. Again, the manual basically tells what you can do, but specific examples for say 3 different kinds of specific setups would help tremendously. Perhaps I'll consider putting something together while I'm still in the newbie stage myself. Thanks again; I'm sure more questions will follow.

 

[mhumm2]

Here's one, what does inherit mean? And, once in a Dataset, can clients create their own folders?

 

[mhumm2]

How do I upload a screenshot to a post? When I click on the Image icon, I'm prompted for a URL. Right now, I purposely have not forwarded any ports or have internet access to my FreeNAS machine.

 

[rogerh]

How do I upload a screenshot to a post? When I click on the Image icon, I'm prompted for a URL. Right now, I purposely have not forwarded any ports or have internet access to my FreeNAS machine.

"Upload a File" button at the bottom of the reply box.