File permissions/ownership lost?

[David Lee]

Samba 2.0.0 on Solaris 2.5/sparc
14,000 users (samba released to small group, but intend to release to all)

My apologies if this is a FAQ:  point me in the right direction!

When editing a WORD document (or Excel, and probably others), the revised
file written back to the UNIX home directory loses its original ownership,
group-ownership and permissions (modes) and gets a default set (me, my
primary group, 644). 

For most people this might be OK (although 600 would be a preferable
default mode), but it wrecks any file-sharing that people might be doing
through groups.

1. Presumably the mode is system-wide, set by "create mask", and is not
   settable per-user?

2. Can samba be persuaded to maintain the owner/group-owner of the
   original file?  Or is this a "feature" of the way WORD/Excel/etc work
   (create new file, delete old, with no owner/mode retention)?

A workaround appears to be to use the "g+s" semantics on the UNIX
directory to force the group ownership of a new file to be inherited from
the directory rather than the user.  (Of course, the original owner and
modes are still lost, and this g+s forces group ownership onto everything,
not just selected items, in that directory.)

Any ideas, hints?  Or do we just have to try to live with it?

Supplementary question: Any ideas what other solutions, (e.g. TAS, Sun's
"Project Cascade" or Network Applicance Filers) do in this situation?

-- 

:  David Lee                                I.T. Service          :
:  Systems Programmer                       Computer Centre       :
:                                           University of Durham  :
:  Phone:    +44 191 374 2882 (ddi)         South Road            :
:  Fax:      +44 191 374 7759               Durham                :
:  Internet: T.D.Lee at durham.ac.uk           U.K.                  :