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

I think I'm encountering the same problem you have. For some reason force user seems to require group write permissions. It does not appear to require world write permissions though, so as a workaround you should be able to get away with 660/770 permissions rather than 777. This shouldn't reduce security; it's just annoying to move files into it outside of samba since you need to make them group-writeable.

Put this in your smb.conf under [Stuff]:

force user = myuser
create mask = 0660
directory mask = 0770

Then run this on your share folder:

sudo chown -R myuser:myuser /home/myuser/share
sudo chmod -R 0660 /home/myuser/share
sudo chmod -R ug+X /home/myuser/share

Then restart smbd. The above will set all files to 660 and all directories to 770, for currently existing files and for files newly created through samba. Note that you don't need force group; by default it matches the primary group of force user. Also note that I'm denying world permissions entirely here. You could probably use 0664, 0775 and ugw+X instead if you want them world-readable.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to make it work without group write permissions. I suspect it's a bug in samba. The recent samba bug #14617 prevented deleting files via force user. It's possible this is another related bug but I don't know enough about it to report it. If you figure out how to get it working with 0644/0755 please let me know!

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.

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.

Try doing this (Its a dirty work around as you shouldn't give 777 permissions lightly)

sudo chmod -R 777 /path/to/share

Here is an article from the Ubuntu website explaining different file/folder permissions

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.

Samba is ultimately limited by the underlying filesystem permissions. What do the permissions on /var/www/myFolder look like? Do they allow anyone write access?

Remove samba by executing following commands

sudo apt-get remove --purge samba
sudo apt-get remove --purge smbclient libsmbclient
sudo apt-get purge samba samba-common
sudo rm -rf /etc/samba/ /etc/default/samba

Install it again

sudo apt-get install samba
sudo apt-get install smbclient libsmbclient

Now original smb.conf has been restored so restart Ubuntu then add user from terminal.

root@Dell-Inspiron-3521:~# sudo smbpasswd -a username (username should be without space eg "sudo smbpasswd -a alamjitsingh")
New SMB password:*********
Retype new SMB password:*********
Added user alamjitsingh.

Now edit smb.conf file as follows. Mentioned lines must be present in the the code.

sudo gedit /usr/share/samba/smb.conf


[global]
 workgroup = WORKGROUP
 passdb backend = tdbsam 
 security = user

[Optional] If you want to share folder which are inside opt directory then you also have to add following line in global section.

usershare owner only = False

In authentication section turn "map to guest = bad user" off by adding # at starting of code

#map to guest = bad user

At last add your personal code

   [sqr_custom]
path = /opt/oracle/psft/pt/ps_home8.55.11/sqr_custom
comment = Personal_Share
read only = no
available = yes
browseable = yes
writable = yes
guest ok = no
public = yes
printable = no
locking = no
strict locking = no

Apart from this your shared folder is in opt folder which require permissions to write. So firstly test this prog by sharing folder of home directory. Then we will proceed further. To know correct path of shared folder drag and drop folder on running terminal.

If you are succeed to run above code then do the following

To create a group:

sudo groupadd demoGroup

To add the user account to the group:

sudo usermod -G demoGroup username(eg alamjitsingh)

For setting permissions of writing

sudo chown -R username:groupname /opt/demo

eg

sudo chown -R alamjitsingh:demogroup /opt/demo

Following lines are for granting the write access to members of the demoGroup in directory demo (It will grant all demoGroup members to write)

sudo chgrp -R demogroup /opt/demo
sudo chmod 2770 /opt/demo

Restart services

sudo service nmbd restart
sudo service smbd restart

eg of shared folder of restricted directory with write privilege

[demo]
path = /opt/demo
comment = HD Share
read only = no
available = yes
browseable = yes
writable = yes
guest ok = no
public = yes
printable = no
locking = no
strict locking = no
force create mode = 0660
force directory mode = 2770
force user = alamjitsingh
force group = demogroup