Hi, I am very new to KDE so please bear with me

I have set up a server with Ubuntu 14.04 and KDE 4.13.3.

I can access a windows laptop on the network from this server, and i can copy files onto the server from the laptop.
I can share a folder on the primary disk of the server, and i can stream a video file from the primary disk on the server on my windows laptop without a problem.

If i plug an external hard drive into the server, I can access the contents of the hard drive from the server
BUT after sharing a folder or files on the external hard drive from the server, I can see the folder on the laptop but I cannot access the contents of the external hard drive.
The error is I do not have permission to access this folder.

The access permissions on the files on the hard drive are set to forbidden for Group and Others.
When i set the permissions to be anything else (read, or read and write) i click ok, go back into it and it says forbidden again.

Is there a way around this?

Thanks

That external disk is certainly fat32/vfat formatted?

luebking wrote:That external disk is certainly fat32/vfat formatted?

Hi,

It is a brand new USB3 1TB external disk, so pretty sure it is NTFS. I can put 8gb movies on there for example.

I have a feeling you are going to say the external disk needs to be fat32 or vfat, but the server has the ntfs-3g driver on there to read and write from NTFS.

The server can read and write to the external disk without any problem.

It looks like it is purely a permissions thing... I cannot set the permissions for files on the external disk for some reason.

If i copy the file from the external disk to the primary disk I can change the permissions without any problem, and the windows laptop can then read the file without a problem.

This must be something really simple, what am I missing?

Thanks

No, you do NOT need to use vfat for smb exports.
Yes, it IS a permission issue (same for NTFS as for VFAT)

You cannot alter unix file permissions on NTFS (at least I don't know a way) but you've to set them (like for vfat) when mounting the device.

You must either squash the users on the smb level (force-user - I doubt you want that?) or ensure to mount the ntfs partition with "relaxed enough" permissions, that esp. means that the samba bound users must get read (write) access and it means to get each of them equal access to _all_ NTFS files! (ok, nearby: you can still manipulate owner / group to have a special user or group exclusive, BUT STILL GLOBAL, write access)

Does anyone have a quick solution on how to just set up an external hard drive for a newbie?
I just got a new one by choosing from http://www.bestsellingreviews.com/Computer/External-Hard-Drive/

Setup for smb sharing?

That really depends on the usecase (hostile/friendly environment, how many users, OSes) - "best" solution is probably to format it extfs (and ensure samba unix extensions are available everywhere, ie. don't use windows, because that gets you transparent file permissions).
Or use nfs