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Forum Discussion
Multiple users sharing files
Greetings ReadyNAS experts!
I have a RN516 with OS6.2.2 and I'd like to set it up to allow multiple users to access/edit/delete the same files. I've searched around the forum and the web in general and cannot seem to figure out how to accomplish this.
My office has about 10 employees–-most on Macs. We've been using a ReadyNAS Pro Business Edition as one user, which seems to work okay, but I'm sure us each having our own user would be a better solution. We use the ReadyNAS as a way to keep project files in sync with each other. Our workflow is...
User A adds File01 to local system in a project directory.
User A syncs project directory to ReadyNAS using Chronosync (Mac) via the AFP protocol.
User B syncs project directory from ReadyNAS using Chronosync to local system.
User B edits File01 on local system in project directory.
User B syncs project directory to ReadyNAS using Chronosync.
... and so on
The way we've accomplished this on our ReadyNAS Pro Business Edition is one login for all users. What I'd like to do for our new RN516 is setup users for each user. My first attempt at doing so failed because ownership for the file User A created seems to prevent User B from editing, even if I put both users in the same group and set the permissions of the file to full read/write access for the group.
Am I missing something or is the way I envision this working not how ReadyNAS file permissions work? Or put another way, is the best/correct way to allow the same permissions on files for multiple employees to all share one user?
Thanks so much!
Chris
I have a RN516 with OS6.2.2 and I'd like to set it up to allow multiple users to access/edit/delete the same files. I've searched around the forum and the web in general and cannot seem to figure out how to accomplish this.
My office has about 10 employees–-most on Macs. We've been using a ReadyNAS Pro Business Edition as one user, which seems to work okay, but I'm sure us each having our own user would be a better solution. We use the ReadyNAS as a way to keep project files in sync with each other. Our workflow is...
User A adds File01 to local system in a project directory.
User A syncs project directory to ReadyNAS using Chronosync (Mac) via the AFP protocol.
User B syncs project directory from ReadyNAS using Chronosync to local system.
User B edits File01 on local system in project directory.
User B syncs project directory to ReadyNAS using Chronosync.
... and so on
The way we've accomplished this on our ReadyNAS Pro Business Edition is one login for all users. What I'd like to do for our new RN516 is setup users for each user. My first attempt at doing so failed because ownership for the file User A created seems to prevent User B from editing, even if I put both users in the same group and set the permissions of the file to full read/write access for the group.
Am I missing something or is the way I envision this working not how ReadyNAS file permissions work? Or put another way, is the best/correct way to allow the same permissions on files for multiple employees to all share one user?
Thanks so much!
Chris
16 Replies
Replies have been turned off for this discussion
- Hi there, I work with Fetopher and after we have spent extensive time trying to get this to work it seems that we have come to a conclusion. I'd love someone from Netgear to pipe in and let us know if we are correct, or if we are simply missing something.
It seems that we can easily set a specific single user / group to have Network access to a share, say production/production. Then, all of our employees simply use that one user to login, all files are saved as production/production and everyone can access everything.
We could also setup multiple shares, each with specific user access, and allow multiple users access to their own shares. Each share would singularly be owned and accessed by an individual user.
We can also have a single share with group level Network access, and wide-open file access (guest/guest defaults, everyone access) in which any user that logs into the share can create their own files / folders.
The thing that we can't do, but were ultimately hoping to do, is have group-level Network access to a single share in which multiple users can login and have shared-access to files / folders. Once a folder is owned by a user, say test/production, all other users can no longer write to that folder despite being in the same group as the original folder owner. Trying to place a new file as test2/production in that folder owned by test/production fails. This is a huge bummer, because we all share files and were hoping to be able to see who last wrote the latest version of the file on our ReadyNAS.
What are we missing? Is the ReadyNAS meant to be a sandboxed user experience, and not a shared file server? - Not sure if this will do what you want, but please take a look: ReadyNAS OS6 - Setting sub-folder permissions in user security mode
- So that seems to be similar to what we want, except it is for Windows over the SMB protocol. Any chance there is a similar setup for a full Mac environment using AFP?
- I don't think there is.
If you have a Windows machine you could try configuring permissions using that and using SMB rather than AFP on your Macs. Apple is moving away from AFP to using SMB anyway. - Aha, now we are onto something. Switching to SMB alone seems to have cleared up our permissions issues. I'm not sure if this is due to AFP trying to be smart and match up local system permissions with remote server permissions or what, but over SMB the proper permissions and ownership are retained and even without setting up additional restrictions via Windows we are able to have multiple users reading/writing from mixed-ownership folders and files, which is exactly what we needed.
Thanks for suggestion to switch to SMB, mdgm! - I'm having similar issues with windows users on a NAS duo v2 using SMB, yet have a v1 which works as advertised.
The configuration on the v2 (which seemingly should allow collaborative file sharing\editing) restricts users to their own files even though a 'group' is set up. I've a thread here outlining the problem which seems to have stalled:
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=81318&p=462462#p462462
To cut a long story short, the only way for my windows users have reliable 'collaborative' access (ie view\edit each other files on that share) is to delete their user accounts off the NAS, and have the share set to anonymous access. Not ideal in a business environment where I need to restrict access to some users yet have other users edit each others files.
Oddly, the NASduo v 1 which works as expected.
Any help sorting the v2 would be hugely appreciated :)
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