After hours of searching, I discovered that the share name and the share directory cannot be the same (and it's not case-sensitive, either). See this post on serverfault.

So, if I change my share name in smb.conf from:

[Music]

to

[Tunes]

I can both read and write to the share. No other changes to my smb.conf were necessary, and no need to chmod 0777.

for what it is worth, I couldn't access my samba share, maybe you have forgotten to add you username to the samba password group (for lack of beter description phrase)

this is what I did to get mine to work

smbpasswd -a username

after by using nautilus, shared my drive/folder with right-click, sharing, etc.

create your password, and use your username and passsword (which you just entered) to access your samba drive, you can also map this drive in Windows

hope this could help

Ok, figured it out. It wasn't in my samba settings. The error was actually in how I was "permanently" mounting my samba share.

I was doing:

//192.168.1.11/craig /home/craig/musicServer cifs username=craig,password=MYPASSWORD 0 0

but I needed

//192.168.1.11/craig /home/craig/musicServer cifs username=craig,password=MYPASSWORD,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777 0 0 

Adding both file_mode and dir_mode solved it.

It looks like you have the mount permissions as read/write for root but only read for anyone else. I think you would need to set the permissions on /media/HDD to be writeable for the walter user or the users group.

sudo chown -R root:users /media/HDD will set the group permissions to users (I presume this exists?) or sudo chown -R walter:users /media/HDD will make it owned by walter.

Looks like you created a folder miguel in the media and you have taken ownership of it. Instead, let's create a group, add users to that group, and set the permissions.

sudo groupadd -g 10000 [samba_group]
sudo adduser migeul [samba_group]
sudo chown root:[samba_group] -R /media/migeul
sudo chgrp [samba_group] /media/migeul
sudo chmod 775 -R /media/migeul

This will create a group and attach it to the folder to be shared. You add the users to that group for access. Set the permissions to 775 which gives the owner and the group read-write-execute access while others only read. Set's it recursively.

Verify that you have total access to the folder. With samba, setting the permissions are a little bit different than file permissions with a ubuntu user. What I mean is that verify the permissions after you take ownership because they could result in a samba error later on down the road. Where nobody can access the drive.

Create a samba account that matches your Linux username precisely.

sudo smbpasswd -a miguel
sudo smbpasswd -e migeul

That will prompt you to create a password for the username miguel. Please note that this is only for SMB shares not for the user in the Operating System.

Afterward, open up the samba config and when sharing the drive make sure you type in writable = yes, browsable = yes, read only = no and add your group to it as well. Also, verify the location you are sharing from. Use the place that it is mounted to.

[migeul]
comment = Migeuls folder
​path = /media/migeul
​browsable = yes
​writable = yes
​guest ok = no
​read only = no
​valid users = @[samba_group]

After you reconfig the /etc/samba/smb.conf file, reload it.

sudo smbd reload

These pages go more in-depth with setting up samba shares.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Samba/SambaServerGuide https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-set-up-samba-shares-for-groups/

You may also need to set your umask as well. To do that open up /etc/profile using sudo nano /etc/profile and at the bottom type in umask 002. Use Control+O to save and Control+X to exit. Best to reboot the server using sudo reboot and the new mask permissions will take place. That setting re-asserts the same permissions for the users.

When it fails for everyone but root (mounted) it looks like:

drwxr-xr-x 1 root root     0 Jun 17  2014 .

But works when it is unmounted and looks like:

drwxrwxrwx 2 root users 4096 Jun 17 16:17 .

You have a simple permissions problem. Clearly the first one only root has the write permission. On the second, it has full permissions.

When you mount a device, it uses the permissions as set on that device. Mount the device, then change the permissions.

I recommend to create a dedicated user for that share and specify it in force user(see docs).

Create a user (shareuser for example) and set the owner of everything in the share folder to that user:

adduser --system shareuser
chown -R shareuser /path/to/share

Then add force user and permission mask settings in smb.conf:

[myshare]
path = /path/to/share
writeable = yes
browseable = yes
public = yes
create mask = 0644
directory mask = 0755
force user = shareuser

Note that guest ok is a synonym for public.