Samba file structure

ETC Microsoft Windows
1

Hi,

My manager asked me to create the same file structure in the new Redhat 6 server, using samba, with the one already used on the windows server for file sharing.

For example,

Parent Folder 
        Child Folder 
        Child Folder 2

and so on

The issue now is that windows will allow you to share the Parent folder to everyone and then you can choose different permissions for the Child folders, where in samba the permissions are applied per share. So when the user will browse the server he will have to see all share folders listed instead of just one file (Parent). Symlinks cannot be used when applying CIFS so i cannot restrict or allow access

What am i doing wrong? Is there any way around the issue apart from the security that can be applied through samba or this is the way that i will have to work using linux?

2

I'm guessing I do not have a full understanding so please give me some help here.

The parent filesystem is on a Windows box.
John is a windows user. John can only view files in 'Child Folder 2'.

Can you have, on the Linux box, just a Child Folder 2 directory? Asked another way Does it have to be:
/Parent/child 2 , or can it just be /child 2
So you have lots of /child n directories, but no parent directory?

BTW UNIX has directories, Windows has folders.

3

John is a Windows user.

Redhat Server has been joined to the same domain with John.

I have implemented Samba on the Redhat server that will be used for file sharing, all files are located on samba server. Sharing one single directory /media/Data/Share for a specific group or user works just fine.

Now, is there a way i can create a structure in a way that when John browses the samba server from his explorer, will see only one directory (Share) and inside that the other directories (Share/Child, Share/Child1,Share/Child2...).

Note that different security permissions have to be applied to Share/Child directories for other users as well. Like NTFS permissions in a Windows box (Different security permissions for each folder without changing the Master share), see below link

Srv1 Share the CompanyData folder but each file inside has different security persmisions in order to allow or block access. In order to do that in samba i had to create a new share for all these folders so i can apply different security persmisions to each folder

4

File permissions in Samba depend on file permissions in UNIX. To restrict a Win users' permissions, restrict the matching UNIX users' permissions.

You can add this to a share's settings:

[TheShare]
   ...
   path = /path/to/%u
   hide unreadable = yes

...to make its path dynamic, and to hide a share if a user doesn't have access to read it. %u means 'username', see 'man smb.conf' for what other substitutions are available.