Network access

In a Linux machine, the permissions determine wether a file is viewable, writable or executabe by other computers on a network.

Mepis by default shares out the various users /home folders to networked users as viewable only, but it is up to the user to set the permissions on each file or folder within their /home.

Folders can have global permissions assigned to them by right clicking the parent folder > Properties > Permissions tab and choosing the set of permissions you want to assign it (and it's contents if you place a checkmark in the bottom left box) and clicking the Ok button.

Basically, if you want to allow write access to your folders over a network, you have to give write permission the "others" and apply it to the folder and all of its contents. If you want to allow network users to view the contents of the folder but not have write access, you can set the permissions to allow viewing only to "others", though you can give write access to selected files or sub-folders within the parent folder.

Cool aye

Mike P

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Life may not be the party we thought, but while we're here, we may as well dance.
Break M$'s shackles from your feet and free yourself with Mepis

Mike P thanks for making the effort, but it still doesn't work, I did as you say normal and also as root, I was able to make the changes, but as soon as I closed the dialogue box and reopened it, it had change back again, perhaps I am missing something here. Ernie

When I first learned of the process, I discovered there were a few items under certain folders within my /home with believe it or not, owner = nobody and group = nogroup. When I tried to set permissions on the folders, making changes to all of their contents, they just bounced back, even if I tried to change them as root. Possible glitch in the works? Dunno, but sure looks like that, besides some of the files were from my last system that I used to experiment alot with. I had previuosly edited some files using a windows PC connected to the network without copying them to the windows pc first as I normally would have, and saved the changes. Another variable was, my last hard disk developed a few bad sectors, so that may have affected the files too.

My filesystem had multiple permission sets for differing users all over the place (80Gb home, 86% used) and my network was not displaying all the files I needed and knew were there, so I tried first to set the permissions for my whole /home/michael as root, checked the network and no change. I then found only the folders that were not displaying all their contents, checked the permissions and found the mess. After drilling through my filing system to find the offending files, that's when I found the problem and was able to correct it, but half of my working day was used up trawling through all of my files, and there's thousands of thousands of them.

My resolve was to copy them to a fat32 drive which effectively strips out all permissions, delete the original and copy them back, then the permissions were set to myself as a user and I could assign them any way I wanted which tidied up the network to a safe and workable level.

Not sure if this will help you in any way, but hopefully, it will ignite a spark somewhere in the grey matter and get you thinking along the right lines. Best of luck.

I'm off to run a Linux Open day and will probably be wasted at the end of it, so you might not hear from me for a day or so just in case you need to make another post.

Hopefully, somebody else might chime in and offer another solution, but if you should find your own, please post it back here and mark your original posts title with [solved]

Mike P

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Life may not be the party we thought, but while we're here, we may as well dance.
Break M$'s shackles from your feet and free yourself with Mepis

Thanks Mike, it did get the grey matter to thinking about it, afraid these days the old brain needs a few nudges to get it going. I haven't found the cure but a work around that suits me, being retired and nothing better to do it doesn't matter how long it takes. I set up a folder on the laptop so that I can save the files I am working on, then later can save them to the appropriate places on the linux machine, not the ideal solution but it works and Im happy with it. good stuff, just one more little problem to solve. Thanks again Ernie.