How to allow to a user of a group to change writeable bit of a fi le ?

[EFT.Eric Devolder]

Hi again,

Following a previous post in this mailing list (about MKS Source Integrity
two days ago), I discovered what could be the problem. I really cannot solve
the problem for now, and I ask if there is a workaround with samba settings.

In fact the application I use must be able to change Read-Only flag on a
file. If two people are part of one group, they are able to modify / change
the files belonging to their permissions.

The mapping is clear: if the file has rwx for user and group, and owns to
user_a.group, normally user_b can write this file. The problem occurs when
user_b decides to mark his file read-only. In this case, file mode changes
to r-x for user and group. And thus user_b is no more able to change the
read-only flag of the file.

However, many RCS tools (like MKS) plays a lot with Read-Only flags. And if
user_a was the last user to change an archive and to extrat it on a network
drive, only user_a will be able to reextract this archive because of
read-only access problem.


On Novell this problem does not occur. I don't know if this is the same with
Windows NT server.

In a general way, one should be able to change the Read-Only flag if one are
part of the same group of the users's read-only file. I know samba cannot
override Unix security scheme, but perhaps with force user and force group ?
(perform a chown on the file!)


If anyone has already encountered such a problem, or give me some help, I
would be happy!


Thank you,


Eric Devolder :)