[Samba] parent vs child directory permissions problem

[Anine Swart]

I run FreeBSD 4.6-RELEASE (GENERIC) with samba-2.2.4_1 installed.
my workstations all run windows xp home or pro with SP2. We're on a
workgroup, not a domain.
 
Lately I've been having a problem with changing rights on subfolders.
 
this is my directory structure
 
drwxrwx---  53 root   allstaff   2048 Jun  2 08:19 topdirectory
    drwxrwx---   4 Jack     group1     512 May 23 13:10 subfolder1
    drwxrwx---   5 Jane     group1     512 Apr 18 15:56 subfolder2    
    drwxrwx---  74 Jack    group2      7680 Apr 28 11:17 subfolder3
    drwxrwx---   8 Jack     group1      512 Apr 19 09:41 subfolder4
    drwxrwx---   5 John     group1      512 Apr  5 13:00 subfolder5
 
group allstaff contains all the users on the system because I want all the
users to be able to see the subfolders within the parent directory.
group1 contains a list of 5 users who are able to read and write under all
the subfolders.
I created group2 which contains all the original members of group 1 with one
extra user added (the extra user needed access to subfolder2 but was not to
be allowed access to any of the other subfolders)
 
this is my smb.conf entry
 
[topdirectory]
        valid users = @group1, at group2
        comment = Directory Comment
        create mode = 770
        directory mode = 770
        path = /fileserv/topdirectory
        writeable = yes
 
all users are able to access directory 'topdirectory' and can view all the
subfolders.
all members of group1 can access all the subfolders IF they are owned by
'group1'
when I change subfolder3's group to group2 then none of the members of
group2 can access the directory.
 
I've triple checked my group configuration and there's nothing in my group
setup that could cause this.
 
could samba or my version of freebsd possibly have a limitation on the
number of groups one can create?
 
I'm stumped.
help!
 
Anine