Baslinux mailing list

[James Miller <jamtat AT mailsnare.net>]

On Thu, 4 Dec 2003, Constant Brouerius van Nidek wrote:

>   You might have the actual file ownership and permissions
>   set so you can't access them.
>   What user (and user ID) are you using on each machine?
>   What are the permissions on the files/directories?
>
> Files on the server are set to my username and /users.
> Most files are in the 0755 mode.
> From my Basiclinux on which I use root/root  the files I tries to
> copy also are in the 0755 mode.
> Is there something I should have set different?
>
> Am now studying the man pages for exports.  Hope to find some
> useful info there.

I've set up a similar scenario on my home network: I access files on a
newer Debian machine via nfs from a BL2 machine and mostly use MC for
doing it.  I, too, initially ran into various permissions problems.  The
way I decided to deal with it, while perhaps not too graceful,
nevertheless works fairly well.  I'll describe it so you can consider
whether it might not suit you, but also so that others onlist may be able
to offer corrections or refinements to my method.  I decided what I should
do to resolve permissions issues in accessing files from the Debian
machine using BL2 is to create a specific directory for file sharing on
the Debian machine, set it to maximum accessibility, and mount only that
directory via nfs.  I called the directory "shared" and put it on the root
filesystem on the Debian machine.  I then chmod'd it to 777.  I made it's
owner "nobody" and its group "nogroup" (I have a really poor understanding
of file ownership and permissions associated with various groups: more
advanced users please offer corrections on how this might be better
accomplished).  In /etc/fstab on the BL machine I put an entry something
like this for the "shared" directory:

-------------------------------------------------------
Debian:/shared  /mnt/Debian nfs defaults,noauto 0 0
-------------------------------------------------------

I also edited /etc/hosts and linked the name of the computer I wanted to
mount the shared directory from (i.e., "Debian") to its numerical address
on my network.  After this, whenever I issue

-----------------------
mount /mnt/Debian
-----------------------

from the command line on the BL machine, only that directory gets mounted
at /mnt/Debian via nfs.  I do still run into permissions problems when I,
for example, download something to that dir on the Debian machine as root
user.  --Question: is there a way to set up the machine so that anything I
put in that directory, no matter what user I am, automatically gets set to
certain permissions and ownership?--  But, for the most part, it solved
the permissions problems I initially had.  If you're using MC, you should
probably get into the habit of unchecking the box "preserve attributes"
when you transfer files into that dir using it: that should preempt some
permissions problems as well.

More advanced users: please offer corrections to the scheme I've offerred
here as a remedy to the problems Constant and I have experienced sharing
files between two networked machines.

James