[Samba] access to all home directories for all users

[Thomas Kreft]

Thanks to Matthew and Sabine for their suggestions, which sadly are not 
solving my problem :). After some more reading and learning I've come up 
with another way which I'll describe below for those who are interested.

I skipped the idea of extensive read & write list parameters in the 
smb.conf and now handle almost everything with standard unix 
permissions, particularly by using the sgid bit on directories (which I 
never used before -- shame on me). In addition to the [homes] service I 
made a service called [users] which serves as a place for symlinks to 
the desired home directories. By mounting this share, my user "tim" can 
see the homes of joe, kate and himself, and can read (and write, if he 
is in the group "kate" resp. "joe").

My smb.conf:

[homes]
         valid users = @users
         write list = @%g
         read only = No
         inherit acls = Yes
         browseable = No
         create mask = 0664
         force create mode = 020
         directory mask = 0775
         force directory mode = 020

[users]
         path = /home/server/userlinks
         valid users = @users
         read only = no
         create mask = 0664
         force create mode = 020
         directory mask = 0775
         force directory mode = 020

# ls -l /home | grep joe
drwxrwsr-x   4 joe    joe    152 Feb  2 16:56 joe

# ls -l joe/
drwxrwsr-x   5 joe    joe    176 Feb  2 21:26 .
drwxr-xr-x  18 root   root   424 Feb  2 21:26 ..
drwx------   2 joe    root   136 Feb  2 14:36 secret
drwxr-sr-x   2 root   joe     48 Feb  2 21:26 test