Please bear with this newbie.

Installed 2005LE no problem.
Set group called admins
Added users to this group, george,bob,bill

as root used mkdir -m 0775 /home/public
as root used chown root.admins /home/public

In smb.conf ...
[public]
path = /home/public
username = george,bill,bob
valid users = george,bill,bob
real list = george,bill,bob
write list = george,bill,bob

checked permissions from george (XP Client)
I get drwx ---- ----

so SU chmod -R 0775 /home/public
Aha, Users now can use directory

But after an hour or so permissions go back to drwx ---- ----

How do i get permission to stay.
I should be able to do this in samba, but not sure how.

George

MSEC (Mandrake Security package) is what's causing that. MSEC runs every hour and resets security settings and file permissions to a template for whatever security level you chose during setup (either 4-higher or 5-paranoid). Since that directory is /home, Mandriva is changing permission to 700 so only the owner has access. Here's how to fix it:

Create/edit this file... /etc/security/msec/perm.local
and put this line in it...
/home/public root.admin 0755

That file is to override permission settings that MSEC uses for the security level you chose. Format is "/dir/path user.group perms". You can use "current" in place of root.admins to not modify the owner and group.

--
John