[plug] Implementing a shared directory over NFS

[Cameron Patrick]

G'day all,

I'm trying to work out the best way to set up a "shared" directory which
is writable to all users in a certain group.  (Sounds simple, eh?)  What
I want is for all files created in that directory (and subdirectories
thereof) to have their group forced to a certain value, and also be
group-writable.  The former can mostly be accomplished with the setgid
permission bit, but I've yet to find a way to do the second without
messing about with each user's umask and thus making /all/ new files
group-writable.

It can be done with Samba's per-share "force group", "force create mode"
and "force directory mode" options, so files created on Windows clients
should be okay.  However, there doesn't seem to be an equivalent option
in the NFS server :-( and using smbfs on a Linux machine is a bit
clumsy.  I've looked into using ACLs, but the server is running Debian
woody and so would need a kernel patch and newer versions of a lot of
stuff; ACLs would also make backups a pain, and it's not entirely
obvious to me that they can do what I want anyway.  Another option, I
suppose, would be patching the NFS server, but that's pretty much a last
resort unless someone has already written the patch for me. :-/

Does anyone else here know of a better solution?

Cheers,

Cameron.

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