Subject: server woes due to file permissions

From: Hans Koomen <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 93 17:35:14 -0400

Folks, we're running netatalk-1.3b2 here, on a Sparc 10 server, providing half
a Gig of file space to our ~70 Macs.  Among the troubles we're experiencing
are

	Mac hangs and needs to be rebooted
	cannot write because you have insufficient privledges
	cannot copy because the file cannot be found
	a numbered file transfer error
	files copied (via RevRdist) show up on Mac with 0 length

I think these are all due to permission settings on files and directories.
If I understand this correctly, then given a folder X belonging to A, with r&w
access for group B, and no access to world, then any documents or subfolders
created (copied into the given folder X) should have the same settings, right?

Well, after some experimentation I found that I can get the documents to have
the right settings if the surrounding folder X has the setgid and sticky bits
turned on.  (chmod g+s,+t X).  Unfortunately, there are still some holes: If I
copy a folder Y containing a document P to X, the Y copy has the same r&w
permissions and the same group as X (which is correct), but it does not have
the setgid and sticky bits turned on. The P copy has the same r&w permissions
as X but it has a different group (namely, the group that I belong to
according to my pwent).  Users in the group set for X will not be able to read
the P copy.  And any further documents added to the copied Y folder will not
even have the right permissions, let alone the right group.

Although it's a pain to remember to do this everytime you copy something, one
can use the Mac to set the group for the folder.  But there's no way to set
the group and/or access permissions for the documents contained in a folder;
the only thing to do is to make the changes in Unix.  Not a viable solution in
the long run.

Any thoughts on what I'm not doing right, or possibly what netatalk is not
doing right?

By the way, why do folders owned by root show up in "Get Info" as belonging to
<Any User>?

- - -	/-/ a n s

	Tel:	(716) 245-5401		Paper:	Johannes A. G. M. Koomen, Ph.D.
	Fax:	(716) 245-5005			State Univ. of N.Y., Geneseo
						Department of Computer Science
	EMail:	[email-masked]		Geneseo, New York  14454-1471