Working a bit with two new SME servers in the past week and creating additional configuration of Samba as a part of this.  There have been a number of things I needed to mess with to get it working how I wanted.

First up SME server 7.5 & 8.0b5 still have an inconsistency with the templating process.

Normally the compilation of a file from the template fragments follows the logical path of the resultant file, i.e.

/etc/httpd/httpd.conf file

is built from the

/etc/e-smith/templates/etc/httpd/httpd.conf/

directory with the template fragments within it.

The Samba smb.conf file lives within the /etc/samba directory

/etc/samba/smb.conf

but is compiled from the

/etc/e-smith/templates/etc/smb.conf

location which is inconsistent but having read through http://bugs.contribs.org it would appear that this has been left alone for quite some years as ok. Minor annoyance for me.

The next bit is trying to get a new share setup for general use and multi user access to a QuickBooks data file.

Creating a new template fragment

{

$OUT .= <<HERE;

[newsharename]
comment = Data files for my group
path = /home/e-smith/files/data
create mask = 0770
force group = mygroupsname
guest ok = yes
writable = yes
browseable = yes

HERE

}

Ok, next I expand the template and restart smb service.

#/sbin/e-smith/expand-template /etc/smb.conf

#service smb restart

Which all appears to work nicely with new files created with the groupname set so that any group member can get to the files they want to open. The only thing I cannot work out is why the exceute bit is not set for the group, i.e. the file mask is -rwxrw—- (0760) rather than -rwxrwx— (0770)  but it does not appear to impact on anything.