[Samba] File Permission Problem Saving Word Doc to Samba Share

Conrad Richter conrad at richters.com
Tue Jul 8 14:21:12 GMT 2003


This is not a critical problem, but it would be nice to have a
resolution so that we can better organize how our company creates and
stores Word documents.  

File Server and Intranet System: 

  OS: (old!)  probably Redhat 5.0 (2.0.32 kernal)

  Samba: (old!)  vers. 1.9.17

  Apache: (old!) 1.2.4

Problem: 

  Word in Office 2000 on Win98 box gets "file permission" error when
trying to save to samba share. 

  System works just fine in a small office environment, and has done so
for several years.  Machine is not exposed to the Internet so little
risk of hacker intrusions, etc.  I would rather not upgrade if I don't
have to.

  Problem detail: When user on win98 box opens a Word .doc within
Internet Explorer (.doc file is in a samba shared directory on the file
server), Word loads and opens the file successfully.  Clicking "Save" 
after making changes to the file results in the file permission error. 
If however user clicks "Back" a dialog box comes asking if user wants to
save the file.  If user clicks to save the changes, the changes are
saved successfully without invoking the file permission error.

  I noticed that if user tries to save by clicking the "Save" button
Word writes a *.tmp file to the samba shared directory, and these .tmp
files accumulate each time an unsuccessful save occurs.  If however the
user just clicks "Back" and saves using the dialog, no *.tmp files
accumulate.  Seems that this problem has something to do with the
creation of .tmp files and the inability of Word to delete them.  

  I forced create mode on the samba share, and I forced apache's user
and group (nobody) on the share, viz. 

  [TestWord]
   comment = DRIVE T:
   path = /home/httpd/intranet/Local/TestWord
   public = yes
   read only = yes
   browseable = yes
   writable = yes
   printable = no
   write list = conrad,nobody
   create mode = 0666          
   force group = nobody
   force user = nobody
   force create mode = 0666 

Can anyone suggest what might be wrong and how it can be fixed? 

Conrad Richter




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