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