Guide to SMB on FreeNAS with Mac users?

[ksignorini]

I've scoured the net for information on how to setup SMB shares on FreeNAS and set permissions properly. Pretty much every resource I've found shows examples of setting user/group permissions from Windows Explorer once the initial connection is made.

My computers are all Macs and I'm deciding to go with SMB shares as Apple is soon to deprecate AFP. It seems the prudent thing to do as I build my FreeNAS server.

However, I cannot find any resources with examples of how best to set up SMB shares, FreeNAS users, and FreeNAS groups when all the client computers are Macs.

Please help.

Thank you in advance.
Kent

 

[ksignorini]

So, from more research I can see that there is no nice way of adjusting SMB (read: CIFS; read: Windows) permissions using a Mac. I've resorted to running Windows 7 in a Parallels VM to get at the shares and adjust additional permissions that way.

However, the default permissions for SMB shares on FreeNAS aren't horrible. Owners get full access. Groups get read/execute. Could be worse.

That said, I found this great set of videos on how to adjust and coordinate SMB (CIFS, Windows) permissions for FreeNAS in general. Here it is: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/freenas-and-samba-smb-permissions-video.8/ right here on these forums.

Hopefully that will be of help to anyone else who stumbles upon this thread down the road.

 

[nojohnny101]

I'm in your similar situation with running all macs on the network but chose to use SMB instead of AFP because of depreciation.

I have mine setup and working, but I feel as if it is on shaky foundation as I set it up with UNIX permissions and I've read this is a no no. It works, and I plan to treat it like a baby so it continues to work until FreeNAS 10 comes out. I'm not closely following its development but I guess I'm hoping some meaningful solution is being implemented.

 

[ksignorini]

From what I've found, the default permissions are essentially like UNIX 775. Although this isn't ideal (gives everyone in the group Write permission) it does work out-of-the-box.

Apparently, commands such as setfacl and getfacl, as well as smbcacls and winacl can also be of use. Here is some other information I found here, though I haven't tried to change the permissions from the command line yet: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/how-to-edit-cifs-permissions-from-the-cli.40594/

 

[nojohnny101]

though I haven't tried to change the permissions from the command line

I'm not willing to do this except for jails because it gets too complicated, is not generally recommended, and make me uncomfortable that I will miss something in the future which will muck up everything.

That's just me though, to each his own!

 

[ksignorini]

I'm very comfortable at the command line, so that's not a problem. More importantly, I'm confident that I'll change some permissions I'll just forget about later and it's the forgetting that will get me into trouble.