I run FreeBSD 4.6-RELEASE (GENERIC) with samba-2.2.4_1 installed. my workstations all run windows xp home or pro with SP2. We're on a workgroup, not a domain. Lately I've been having a problem with changing rights on subfolders. this is my directory structure drwxrwx--- 53 root allstaff 2048 Jun 2 08:19 topdirectory drwxrwx--- 4 Jack group1 512 May 23 13:10 subfolder1 drwxrwx--- 5 Jane group1 512 Apr 18 15:56 subfolder2 drwxrwx--- 74 Jack group2 7680 Apr 28 11:17 subfolder3 drwxrwx--- 8 Jack group1 512 Apr 19 09:41 subfolder4 drwxrwx--- 5 John group1 512 Apr 5 13:00 subfolder5 group allstaff contains all the users on the system because I want all the users to be able to see the subfolders within the parent directory. group1 contains a list of 5 users who are able to read and write under all the subfolders. I created group2 which contains all the original members of group 1 with one extra user added (the extra user needed access to subfolder2 but was not to be allowed access to any of the other subfolders) this is my smb.conf entry [topdirectory] valid users = @group1,@group2 comment = Directory Comment create mode = 770 directory mode = 770 path = /fileserv/topdirectory writeable = yes all users are able to access directory 'topdirectory' and can view all the subfolders. all members of group1 can access all the subfolders IF they are owned by 'group1' when I change subfolder3's group to group2 then none of the members of group2 can access the directory. I've triple checked my group configuration and there's nothing in my group setup that could cause this. could samba or my version of freebsd possibly have a limitation on the number of groups one can create? I'm stumped. help! Anine