I’ve always had a problem with figuring out permissions in Samba. Today I was looking up some information on it and found this very good description posted on the samba mailing list:

“create mask” *removes* permissions. “force create mode” *adds* them. To quote from the man page for smb.conf

This parameter [create mask] may be thought of as a bit-wise MASK for the UNIX modes of a file. Any bit *not* set here will be *removed* from the modes set on a file when it is created.

So if you don’t want the o+r bit set use:

create mask = 0770

If you now want to force ug+rwx permissions for all files, *also* use:

force create mode = 0770

Another way of thinking about these is that “create mask” sets an upper bound on the permissions for the file and “force create mode” sets a lower bound, and the actual permissions are in between. (Except that force create mode is applied second, so if it is more permissive than the create mask, force create mode will override create mask.) Note that neither of these apply to directories. The analogous parameters there are “directory mask” and “force directory mode”.

My friend Steve has bought a car, trailer/bus, and has gotten a crew together to compete in racing events. The car will be sporting tux the penguin (linux mascot) and other open source “free” software logos. He recently contacted Richard Stallman of FSF fame to request using an FSF logo on the car. Here is his response in typical Stallman fair:

Subject: Re: request for FSF usage- originally submitted to Dave Turner
From: “Richard M. Stallman”
Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2005 20:59:36 -0400
To: steve elzey

>I am not requesting sponsorship. The goal is to promote open source
>and electronic freedom ideologies.

I should point out that we are not in favor of open source. That is
the label of a different group that disagrees with our basic
philosophical values.

(See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html
for more explanation.)

That is a side issue as regards your specific request, but I feel
obliged to correct the misunderstanding rather than let it pass.

Dave suggested I email you.
I would like to aslo use the FSF logo and website address.

Do you mean, just put them on the car? Sure.
I am not sure precusely what is the “FSF Logo”.
Do you mean a gnu drawing?

Check out Steve’s racing site. Soon there will be t-shirts, hats and more.

Well I finally got my Epson Perfection 3170 working in Gentoo Linux with the epkowa drivers version 1.10.0-3.

I recieved this scanner for my birthday on March 9, 2004 and am now just getting it working in October 5, 2004! Talk about procrastinating on my part 🙂 It’s not like I didn’t try though. Any on to the goodies… click read more—>

Continue reading →

Have had this up for awhile but figure some people don’t know. I have a howto directory here: http://footon.jheslop.com/howto/. So far I have 2 docs:

• http://footon.jheslop.com/howto/LVS-HA-win2k-howto.html
• http://footon.jheslop.com/howto/anti-virus-spam-howto.html

They are both under Creative Commons license so use as you will.