Samba public share, without setting contents to 777?

[uhcafigdc]

I want to have a samba share set up so that any anonymous Windows XP user can read and write to the share without being prompted for a username or password. So far I have achieved this by using these options in my smb.conf

[global]
security = share

[share1]
path = /some/path
writeable = yes
public = yes

...and setting permissions for the shared directory and all it's contents to 777.

776 and 766 don't work, and I feel like these are appropriate settings. What is the reason for last 7?

Is there a way to achieve this without setting to 777?

[jmadero]

no the 777 is what makes it universally accesable.

I'd suggest using nautilus samba share if you're using Ubuntu ( possibly other distros also). If you get this you can just right click on a folder and go to sharing options and choose how you want it to work for that folder. Hope that helps

[uhcafigdc]

I don't understand why the last value needs to be 7 (read, write, execute) instead of 6 (read, write) in order for it to be universally readable and writable.

[jmadero]

You're right. What happens when you change it?

[uhcafigdc]

The owner of the file or directory must be the user specified with the `guest account` option in order to read/write via Samba when permissions are 766, which is global read/write.

If I set the share directory to 766 and it's owner to root, I cannot access the share at all. "Network access is denied."


What I think this means is that the user specified in the `guest account` option must have execute privileges over files or directories it writes to. Why is this? Is the guest account user executing the file when it writes?