SELinux enforcing, an external ntfs-3g mount, Samba and Fedora 8

[potat0]

Has anyone got Samba working to access an external ntfs-3g mount with SELinux enforcing on
Fedora 8?  The following is what I've done so far, and my networked XP Pro machines
aren't even seeing the Linux box--any ideas?

Many TIA,
Craig

Administration->Samba
 Directory      Share name Permissions Visibility
 /mnt/ntfsdrive ntfsdrive  Read/Write  Visible

Bottom of my /etc/samba/smb.conf file:

[ntfsdrive]
        path = /mnt/ntfsdrive
        writeable = yes
;       browseable = yes
        guest ok = yes

System->SELinux Management->Boolean checked:
 samba: Allow samba to run as the domain controller
 samba: Export all files on system read-write
 samba: Allow samba to export user home directories
 samba: Allow samba to modify public files
 samba: Allow samba to export NFS volumes
 samba: Allow samba to run unconfined scripts

Settings->Firewall
 Samba green checked as a trusted service

sudo smbpasswd -a username
sudo /etc/init.d/smb restart
sudo /sbin/chkconfig --level 35 smb on
sudo /sbin/chkconfig --list smb
smb             0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:off   5:on    6:off

sudo /etc/init.d/smb restart
Shutting down SMB services:                                [  OK  ]
Starting SMB services:                                     [  OK  ]


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[Tim]

On Tue, 2007-12-11 at 20:38 -0700, Craig White wrote:
>  Thus the concept of 'users' and 'mapping', though
> intriguing, would be
>  rather pointless for an NTFS filesystem mounted by ntfs-3g  
Nup, I'd say it's just as valid as the user ownership in my ext3 /home
partition.

I could well have three people using a Linux box, and the same three
people using Windows, and wanting to each own their own files, all of
the time, no matter where stored.

Whether ntfs-3g can manage that is another matter, but there's
definitely good reasons to want seamless different user ownership across
different file systems.

-- 
(This computer runs FC7, my others run FC4, FC5 & FC6, in case that's
 important to the thread.)

Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.
I read messages from the public lists.

[Tim]

Craig White:
> >> Thus the concept of 'users' and 'mapping',
> though intriguing, would be
> >> rather pointless for an NTFS filesystem mounted by ntfs-3g   
Tim:
> > Nup, I'd say it's just as valid as the user ownership in
> my ext3 /home
> > partition.
> > 
> > I could well have three people using a Linux box, and the same three
> > people using Windows, and wanting to each own their own files, all of
> > the time, no matter where stored. 
John Summerfield:
>  However much you wish it, I don't think it would even work for
> two 
>  Windows systems on the same computer. 
That would be harder than Windows sharing with Linux, at least we can
make Linux do what we want it to.  Windows philosophy is that it won't
let you customise things exactly how you want it, you have to fit in
with how it wants to do things.

>  For starters, Windows expects to be installed to a primary partition.
>
>  This protects one Windows system from another installed on the same drive. 
I've broken that rule before, but I can't remember which version of
Windows.

> > Whether ntfs-3g can manage that is another matter, but
> there's
> > definitely good reasons to want seamless different user ownership across
> > different file systems. 
>  A problem is whether user "tim" in one context is the same
> as "tim" in 
>  another. 
Of course.  User mapping would have to be manual, or at least tweaked
after an automatic audit.  As you say, you might have two different Tims
on a system, or differing usernames on the two OSs.

-- 
[tim@bigblack ~]$ uname -ipr
2.6.23.1-10.fc7 i686 i386

Using FC 4, 5, 6 & 7, plus CentOS 5.  Today, it's FC7.

Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.
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[Daniel J Walsh]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

craigni wrote:
>  Thanks to everyone for the posts.  Here is where I am--I was able to
> mount the drive with a different uid/gid than root/root.
>  
>  cd /mnt
>  sudo umount media
>  sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdd1 /mnt/media -o uid=500,gid=1000
>  ls -al media
>  total 233
>  drwxrwxrwx 1 craign family   4096 2007-12-12 23:04 .
>  drwxr-xr-x 6 root   root     4096 2007-12-02 14:13 ..
>  drwxrwxrwx 1 craign family      0 2007-09-16 11:31 Craig
>  ...
>  
>  But I'm still getting the same SELinux AVC denial when I try to access the drive
> through Network Places in the VMWare XP Pro virtual system.
>  
>  It keeps saying I need to
>  setsebool -P samba_export_all_ro=1, which is already turned on.
>  
>  Any ideas?
>  Many TIA,
>  Craig
>  
>   
Please send the actual avc message?
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.8 (GNU/Linux)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iEYEARECAAYFAkd5V3cACgkQrlYvE4MpobMNIQCfQ0zngdqjF1Nipfm7TRskUUzU
> Zt0An1s64RqjyCOJZil9cjflncKOvjQ5
> =6bzQ
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

[Mikkel]

Craig White wrote:
>  
>  Normally, I would point someone to 'man mount' but the parameters for
>  ntfs-3g aren't included in mount's man pages since it isn't part of the
>  distribution but I would guess that there is some man page for ntfs-3g.
>   
man ntfs-3g - it looks like it uses the standard mount options, plus
a few specific to ntfs-3g. The allow_other option look interesting.

Mikkel
-- 

  Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!

[Mikkel]

Craig White wrote:
>  It would appear that mounting ntfs-3g systems is like mounting vfat
>  where the user/group that mounts the files is the owner/group of those
>  files and no amount of chown/chmod will change that.
>  
>  Mount the disk with uid/gid that you want.
>  
>  Craig
>   
Chown/chmod only works on file systems that support it, and I don't
believe that NTFS does. At least the Linux implementation does not.
So you are limited to the mount options to set things for the entire
file system. You can change the apparent permissions on the
files/directories with some of the mount options.

When serving out Samba shares, I find that if you tell Samba to use
the same user/group as you mounted the file system as works well.

Mikkel
-- 

  Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!

[potat0]

Thanks super, Craig--that was a missing link.  Not only can my Windows XP boxes see the
Fedora system, they can access my home directory.  However, the final piece of the puzzle
is driving me nuts.  They *cannot* access the ntfs-3g drive.  The drive shows, but when I
click on it, I get an SELinux AVC Denial, which says SELinux is preventing the samba
daemon from serving r/o local files to remote clients, and tells me that I need to turn on
the samba_export_all_ro boolean, which I did without success.

I even tried to change the permissions on the ntfs-3g drive to match those of my home
directory, eg
cd /mnt
sudo chown -R username extdrive
sudo chgrp -R usergroup extdrive
But weirdness of weirdness, when I ls that drive, all the files are still owned by root
root.

Any help in any direction would be massively appreciated,
Thanks,
Craig
>  
>  Craig White wrote:
>  On Mon, 2007-12-10 at 08:31 +0100, craigni wrote:
>  
>  > Has anyone got Samba working to access an external ntfs-3g mount with SELinux
> enforcing on Fedora 8?  The following is what I've done so far, and my networked XP
> Pro machines aren't even seeing the Linux box--any ideas?
>  > 
>  > Many TIA,
>  > Craig
>  > 
>  > Administration->Samba
>  > Directory      Share name Permissions Visibility
>  > /mnt/ntfsdrive ntfsdrive  Read/Write  Visible
>  > 
>  > Bottom of my /etc/samba/smb.conf file:
>  > 
>  > [ntfsdrive]
>  > path = /mnt/ntfsdrive
>  > writeable = yes
>  > ;       browseable = yes
>  > guest ok = yes
>  > 
>  > System->SELinux Management->Boolean checked:
>  > samba: Allow samba to run as the domain controller
>  > samba: Export all files on system read-write
>  > samba: Allow samba to export user home directories
>  > samba: Allow samba to modify public files
>  > samba: Allow samba to export NFS volumes
>  > samba: Allow samba to run unconfined scripts
>  > 
>  > Settings->Firewall
>  > Samba green checked as a trusted service
>  > 
>  > sudo smbpasswd -a username
>  > sudo /etc/init.d/smb restart
>  > sudo /sbin/chkconfig --level 35 smb on
>  > sudo /sbin/chkconfig --list smb
>  > smb             0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:off   5:on    6:off
>  > 
>  > sudo /etc/init.d/smb restart
>  > Shutting down SMB services:                                [  OK  ]
>  > Starting SMB services:                                     [  OK  ]
>  > 
>  ----
>  If your problem is computers 'seeing' your F8 samba, I understand they separated
> smb and nmb and must be started / configured separately.
>  
>  sudo /sbin/chkconfig --levels 2345 nmb on
>  sudo /sbin/service nmb restart
>  
>  Craig 


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[potat0]

>  
>  John Summerfield wrote:
>  However much you wish it, I don't think it would even work for two
>  Windows systems on the same computer.
>  
>  For starters, Windows expects to be installed to a primary partition.
>  This protects one Windows system from another installed on the same drive.
>   
With a small boot partition you can have as many flavors of windows that you want and the
system files can exist in the extended partition.  Often used to have a beta version or an
older version on the same machine.  Coexists with multiple versions of linux.  The boot
partition should be the first primary on the drive to the best of my knowledge.

Some complications with VISTA.  Microsoft thinks hard drives are infinite and makes a lot
of internal hidden restore snapshots with an extension to the ntfs structure.  Apparently
just opening a partition with XP causes those snapshots to be lost (reference microsoft
knowledgebase article on multiboot systems).  Feature not a bug ;-)Chances are that this
problem would occur opening a VISTA system partition witn ntfs-3g.

Robert McBroom


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[Tim]

On Fri, 2007-12-14 at 11:30 +0100, craigni wrote:
>  sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdd1 /mnt/media -o uid=500,gid=1000
>
>  But I'm still getting the same SELinux AVC denial when I try to access
>  the drive through Network Places  
You may need to add SELinux contexts into the mount command line, so
it's mounted with rules allowing Samba serving, as well.

If you need to change SELinux contexts to allow Samba serving, it'll
have to be done as a mounting parameter, as unlike ext3 file systems,
the file system can't handle them itself.

-- 
(This computer runs FC7, my others run FC4, FC5 & FC6, in case that's
 important to the thread.)

Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.
I read messages from the public lists.

[Craig White]

On Fri, 2007-12-14 at 11:30 +0100, craigni wrote:
>  Thanks to everyone for the posts.  Here is where I am--I was able to
> mount the drive with a different uid/gid than root/root.
>  
>  cd /mnt
>  sudo umount media
>  sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdd1 /mnt/media -o uid=500,gid=1000
>  ls -al media
>  total 233
>  drwxrwxrwx 1 craign family   4096 2007-12-12 23:04 .
>  drwxr-xr-x 6 root   root     4096 2007-12-02 14:13 ..
>  drwxrwxrwx 1 craign family      0 2007-09-16 11:31 Craig
>  ...
>  
>  But I'm still getting the same SELinux AVC denial when I try to access the drive
> through Network Places in the VMWare XP Pro virtual system.
>  
>  It keeps saying I need to
>  setsebool -P samba_export_all_ro=1, which is already turned on.
>  
>  Any ideas? 
----
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-selinux-list

where you'll get knowledgeable advice on how to deal with selinux for
your issue

Craig

[potat0]

Thanks to everyone for the posts.  Here is where I am--I was able to mount the drive with
a different uid/gid than root/root.

cd /mnt
sudo umount media
sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdd1 /mnt/media -o uid=500,gid=1000
ls -al media
total 233
drwxrwxrwx 1 craign family   4096 2007-12-12 23:04 .
drwxr-xr-x 6 root   root     4096 2007-12-02 14:13 ..
drwxrwxrwx 1 craign family      0 2007-09-16 11:31 Craig
...

But I'm still getting the same SELinux AVC denial when I try to access the drive
through Network Places in the VMWare XP Pro virtual system.

It keeps saying I need to
setsebool -P samba_export_all_ro=1, which is already turned on.

Any ideas?
Many TIA,
Craig


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[John Summerfield]

Tim wrote:
>  On Tue, 2007-12-11 at 20:38 -0700, Craig White wrote:
> > Thus the concept of 'users' and 'mapping', though intriguing, would
> be
> > rather pointless for an NTFS filesystem mounted by ntfs-3g 
>  
>  Nup, I'd say it's just as valid as the user ownership in my ext3 /home
>  partition.
>  
>  I could well have three people using a Linux box, and the same three
>  people using Windows, and wanting to each own their own files, all of
>  the time, no matter where stored. 
However much you wish it, I don't think it would even work for two 
Windows systems on the same computer.

For starters, Windows expects to be installed to a primary partition. 
This protects one Windows system from another installed on the same drive.


>  
>  Whether ntfs-3g can manage that is another matter, but there's
>  definitely good reasons to want seamless different user ownership across
>  different file systems. 
A problem is whether user "tim" in one context is the same as "tim" in

another.

I manage a Windows network. If I log on to a Windows box as summer using 
a local account (as I commonly do), then Windows creates me a home 
directory.

If I then log onto the same Windows box using my domain login, also 
summer, it then creates a new home directory, summer.000.

If I delete the domain account, summer, and then recreate it (I did this 
on a Windows course), then log on using the domain login, summer, on the 
same Windows box, it then creates a new home directory, summer.001.

The assumption, the safe one, is that the three accounts are for 
different people.


-- 

Cheers
John

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You cannot reply off-list:-)

[Craig White]

On Wed, 2007-12-12 at 09:36 +0000, Szabolcs Szakacsits wrote:
>  Craig White <craigwhite <at> azapple.com> writes:
>  > I don't have an NTFS drive that I'm willing to connect up just for
>  > experimentation 
>  
>  NTFS support on Linux is fully self-contained just like ext3, XFS, FAT, JFS,
>  etc, i.e. no need for an alian NTFS drive to do experiments:
>  
>   http://ntfs-3g.org/quality.html#howtotest
>  
>  > Thus the concept of 'users' and 'mapping', though intriguing, would
> be
>  > rather pointless for an NTFS filesystem mounted by ntfs-3g
>  
>  Linux-Windows user/group mapping is possible by a file on the NTFS volume called
>  UserMapping. NTFS ownership and permission support currently available as beta 
>  with the full endorsement and support of the NTFS-3G project from 
>  
>   http://pagesperso-orange.fr/b.andre/security.html
>  
>  Regards, 
----
Szaka - extremely impressive, thanks for the clarity and the major
efforts.

Still, I'm not likely to use NTFS for durable storage on Linux but I
feel that I can confidently use ntfs instead of vfat for portable hard
drives instead of vfat.

User/Group mapping via a manually maintained file is not my idea of fun
but it has to begin somewhere.

Thanks

Craig

[Szabolcs Szakacsits]

Craig White <craigwhite <at> azapple.com> writes:
>  I don't have an NTFS drive that I'm willing to connect up
> just for
>  experimentation  
NTFS support on Linux is fully self-contained just like ext3, XFS, FAT, JFS,
etc, i.e. no need for an alian NTFS drive to do experiments:

 http://ntfs-3g.org/quality.html#howtotest

>  Thus the concept of 'users' and 'mapping', though
> intriguing, would be
>  rather pointless for an NTFS filesystem mounted by ntfs-3g 
Linux-Windows user/group mapping is possible by a file on the NTFS volume called
UserMapping. NTFS ownership and permission support currently available as beta 
with the full endorsement and support of the NTFS-3G project from 

 http://pagesperso-orange.fr/b.andre/security.html

Regards,
            Szaka

--
NTFS-3G Lead Developer:  http://ntfs-3g.org

[Craig White]

On Wed, 2007-12-12 at 12:31 +1030, Tim wrote:
>  Craig White:
>  >>> Mount the disk with uid/gid that you want. 
>   
>  Tim:
>  >> Without some sort of additional user mapping between which user is which
>  >> on Windows versus Linux, I can't see how you could avoid that.
>  
>  Craig White:
>  > I don't understand your point.
>  > 
>  > I know that a fat/vfat mount doesn't understand posix attributes and
>  > they cannot be stored on the filesystem so the uid/gid is declared at
>  > the time of mounting (or if undeclared, root:root because only root can
>  > mount the filesystem unless designated otherwise, i.e. by hal or within
>  > fstab).
>  
>  Ownership, not permissions.
>  
>  On Windows, users Tim, Fred, and Barney save their files, and their
>  files are owned by themselves, with the Windows filing system knowing
>  the association between files and particular users.
>  
>  Linux uses a different user identifier system.  It can tell that *those*
>  Windows files are owned by three different people.  But without some
>  mapping that says user 500 on Linux is Tim, and user X on Windows is the
>  same Tim, and so on for the other users, there isn't a way for each
>  users files to be owned by the same users on both systems. 
----
I don't have an NTFS drive that I'm willing to connect up just for
experimentation but OP clearly believes that all files on ntfs-3g mount
were listed as root:root and I have no reason to dispute, that has
always been my experience with vfat mounts.

Thus the concept of 'users' and 'mapping', though intriguing, would be
rather pointless for an NTFS filesystem mounted by ntfs-3g
----
>  Dismounting and remounting the drive with the next user owning all
> the
>  files is a mess, and useless for multi-user systems where there actually
>  are multiple users using it at the same time. 
----
Hence my suggestion that using an NTFS filesystem mounted by ntfs-3g was
simply a temporary solution and not a method for continued operation.
----
>  Removable media is a bigger pain.  You can plug it into systems
> which
>  have completely different users. 
----
depending of course, how it is mounted. Yes if mounted by hal, no if
mounted by fstab and of course, a filesystem that supports posix
attributes.

Craig

[Tim]

Craig White:
> >> Mount the disk with uid/gid that you want.  
 
Tim:
> > Without some sort of additional user mapping between which user
> is which
> > on Windows versus Linux, I can't see how you could avoid that. 
Craig White:
>  I don't understand your point.
>  
>  I know that a fat/vfat mount doesn't understand posix attributes and
>  they cannot be stored on the filesystem so the uid/gid is declared at
>  the time of mounting (or if undeclared, root:root because only root can
>  mount the filesystem unless designated otherwise, i.e. by hal or within
>  fstab). 
Ownership, not permissions.

On Windows, users Tim, Fred, and Barney save their files, and their
files are owned by themselves, with the Windows filing system knowing
the association between files and particular users.

Linux uses a different user identifier system.  It can tell that *those*
Windows files are owned by three different people.  But without some
mapping that says user 500 on Linux is Tim, and user X on Windows is the
same Tim, and so on for the other users, there isn't a way for each
users files to be owned by the same users on both systems.

Dismounting and remounting the drive with the next user owning all the
files is a mess, and useless for multi-user systems where there actually
are multiple users using it at the same time.

Removable media is a bigger pain.  You can plug it into systems which
have completely different users.

-- 
[tim@bigblack ~]$ uname -ipr
2.6.23.1-10.fc7 i686 i386

Using FC 4, 5, 6 & 7, plus CentOS 5.  Today, it's FC7.

Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.
I read messages from the public lists.

[Craig White]

On Wed, 2007-12-12 at 01:45 +1030, Tim wrote:
>  On Tue, 2007-12-11 at 07:55 -0700, Craig White wrote:
>  > It would appear that mounting ntfs-3g systems is like mounting vfat
>  > where the user/group that mounts the files is the owner/group of those
>  > files and no amount of chown/chmod will change that.
>  > 
>  > Mount the disk with uid/gid that you want. 
>  
>  Without some sort of additional user mapping between which user is which
>  on Windows versus Linux, I can't see how you could avoid that. 
----
I don't understand your point.

I know that a fat/vfat mount doesn't understand posix attributes and
they cannot be stored on the filesystem so the uid/gid is declared at
the time of mounting (or if undeclared, root:root because only root can
mount the filesystem unless designated otherwise, i.e. by hal or within
fstab).

Normally, I would point someone to 'man mount' but the parameters for
ntfs-3g aren't included in mount's man pages since it isn't part of the
distribution but I would guess that there is some man page for ntfs-3g.

Guessing (I have read nothing to suggest better), something like this
in /etc/fstab would probably work...

/dev/sdXX  /mnt/ntfsdrive  ntfs-3g uid=Y,gid=Z,ANY_SELINUX_CONTEXTS  0 0

where XX is the drive letter and partition of the hard drive
(discoverable by typing mount)
where Y is the uid of the desired "user"
where Z is the gid of the desired "user's group"

It seems obvious to me that ntfs-3g is not a good filesystem for
permanent storage but rather a means to use a hard drive on Linux that
is normally used on a Windows computer temporarily.

Craig

[Tim]

On Tue, 2007-12-11 at 07:55 -0700, Craig White wrote:
>  It would appear that mounting ntfs-3g systems is like mounting vfat
>  where the user/group that mounts the files is the owner/group of those
>  files and no amount of chown/chmod will change that.
>  
>  Mount the disk with uid/gid that you want.  
Without some sort of additional user mapping between which user is which
on Windows versus Linux, I can't see how you could avoid that.

-- 
(This computer runs FC7, my others run FC4, FC5 & FC6, in case that's
 important to the thread.)

Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.
I read messages from the public lists.

[Craig White]

On Tue, 2007-12-11 at 11:00 +0100, craigni wrote:
>  Thanks super, Craig--that was a missing link.  Not only can my
> Windows XP boxes see the Fedora system, they can access my home directory.  However, the
> final piece of the puzzle is driving me nuts.  They *cannot* access the ntfs-3g drive. 
> The drive shows, but when I click on it, I get an SELinux AVC Denial, which says SELinux
> is preventing the samba daemon from serving r/o local files to remote clients, and tells
> me that I need to turn on the samba_export_all_ro boolean, which I did without success.
>  
>  I even tried to change the permissions on the ntfs-3g drive to match those of my home
> directory, eg
>  cd /mnt
>  sudo chown -R username extdrive
>  sudo chgrp -R usergroup extdrive
>  But weirdness of weirdness, when I ls that drive, all the files are still owned by root
> root.
>  
>  Any help in any direction would be massively appreciated,
>  Thanks, 
----
It would appear that mounting ntfs-3g systems is like mounting vfat
where the user/group that mounts the files is the owner/group of those
files and no amount of chown/chmod will change that.

Mount the disk with uid/gid that you want.

Craig

[Craig White]

On Mon, 2007-12-10 at 08:31 +0100, craigni wrote:
>  Has anyone got Samba working to access an external ntfs-3g mount with
> SELinux enforcing on Fedora 8?  The following is what I've done so far, and my
> networked XP Pro machines aren't even seeing the Linux box--any ideas?
>  
>  Many TIA,
>  Craig
>  
>  Administration->Samba
>   Directory      Share name Permissions Visibility
>   /mnt/ntfsdrive ntfsdrive  Read/Write  Visible
>  
>  Bottom of my /etc/samba/smb.conf file:
>  
>  [ntfsdrive]
>          path = /mnt/ntfsdrive
>          writeable = yes
>  ;       browseable = yes
>          guest ok = yes
>  
>  System->SELinux Management->Boolean checked:
>   samba: Allow samba to run as the domain controller
>   samba: Export all files on system read-write
>   samba: Allow samba to export user home directories
>   samba: Allow samba to modify public files
>   samba: Allow samba to export NFS volumes
>   samba: Allow samba to run unconfined scripts
>  
>  Settings->Firewall
>   Samba green checked as a trusted service
>  
>  sudo smbpasswd -a username
>  sudo /etc/init.d/smb restart
>  sudo /sbin/chkconfig --level 35 smb on
>  sudo /sbin/chkconfig --list smb
>  smb             0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:off   5:on    6:off
>  
>  sudo /etc/init.d/smb restart
>  Shutting down SMB services:                                [  OK  ]
>  Starting SMB services:                                     [  OK  ] 
----
If your problem is computers 'seeing' your F8 samba, I understand they separated
smb and nmb and must be started / configured separately.

sudo /sbin/chkconfig --levels 2345 nmb on
sudo /sbin/service nmb restart

Craig