This is just another one of those things that didn’t make any sense and only partially does now. At least NOW I know there is more at play here than the simple solutions in Samba using create mask and create directory mask. In Linux, that’s how I would get around the issues of Windows directory permissions running on a Linux SMB share.

Now, I am learning to do things the OpenSolaris way. I am loving OpenSolaris and ZFS! However, coming from a Linux and Windows “way of life”, there are some differences that just aren’t clear. What kills me is, I try the RTFM thing, and somehow completely miss that one little thing that makes it all work. Off topic, but an example, coming from Linux, I would just type “su” and get root access. In OpenSolaris, that won’t work. Neither will “pfexec su”, nor “sudo su”. Then one day, after dealing with it for a week or so, I stumble upon a post where someone in an unrelated sample script typed “pfexec su – root”. There ya go! Argh!

Anyway, back on the ZFS/CIFS/ACL thing. It was driving me nuts that I couldn’t figure it out. I wanted a folder with this setup:
/pool/sharefs – owner:greg – group:domusers
greg and domusers should have full control and all folders under “sharefs” should inherit that.

So under linux/samba, that’s where I would do like “create mask = 770″ or simlar, and “force create group = domusers”. Something like that, can’t remember exactly. made it simple actually. It always wrote files with the right perms and ownership and other people in that group could read/write just fine.

Problem is, you can’t get very specific about who get’s what, where, and you can’t use more than one group. Well, sure enough, there’s a thing called “ACL” that handles that stuff now. It’s been around for a while now, but I never even heard of it until I started using OpenSolaris. I like how it seems to be more compatible with the way Windows handles ACL’s. What I don’t like is, it’s confusing. I get the NTFS/Share perms in Windows, been doing that a long time now. The CIFS/ZFS ACL thing kind of makes sense, and it will “click” at some point the more I use it.

After spending hours on this, I reached a point where I had to figure it out. Here’s what I did.

On the ZFS file system, create it normally for SMB access. Then I changed some properties for aclinherit and aclmode. Change those to “passthrough”:
zfs set -o aclinherit=passthrough -o aclmode=passthrough pool/sharefs

Then chmod/chown. OH! That’s another thing. You need to use /bin/chmod and /bin/ls! Not just type: chmod … That wont work. In OpenSolaris the default path points to /usr/gnu/bin/chmod, which doesn’t have the “A” or “V” options to set/view ACL’s. That was another thing that DROVE ME CRAZY!!! I read the man pages and manuals and docs online and I didn’t catch anything that said, “Hey, there are different versions of chmod and ls here!” I can’t believe the time wasting here! Back to the point, do this to put your own default perms on:

/bin/chmod 2774 /pool/sharefs
(I actually am not positive that is needed, but I think it set group as inheritable)

/bin/chmod -R A- /pool/sharefs
(that will wipe out the current perms)

/bin/chmod -R A=owner@:full_set:fd:allow /pool/sharefs
(resets perms with only that acl)

/bin/chmod -R A+group@:full_set:fd:allow /pool/sharefs
(that appends the group perms, full control)

/bin/chmod -R A+everyone@:read_set:fd:allow /pool/sharefs
(above appends everyone read access)

In all the above that will preset INHERITABLE permissions for the subdirectories.  Notice above there is one with “A=” on it?  That will reset the perms and set only that perm.  So I guess you may not even need the previous line for “A-” to reset.  (I am just learning here ya know!)

It looks as if that makes a little sense now.  You can view the current ACL’s like so:  ”/bin/ls -V /pool/sharefs”

In my case, I might want to add another user or group:

/bin/chmod -R A+user:stacy:full_set:fd:allow /pool/sharefs
/bin/chmod -R A+group:othergroup:full_set:fd:allow /pool/sharefs
/bin/chmod -R A+group:yetanothergroup:read_set:fd:allow /pool/sharefs

So with this setup I can now open the share on the server and create a file or folder with inherited permissions.  It does, however, save my username as a new owner, so keep that in mind.  But if the group stays in there with “domusers” as full read/write access, I am happy.

Well, now I get it just a little and it makes more sense compared to Windows ACL’s.  I didn’t go over any share specifics and authentication issues, this was just ACL’s!  I still have to RTFM my way around that for a while.  Next project, join OpenSolaris to a Windows domain.  (Which, BTW, does not work in NT Domain style connections, you have to use Active Directory.)