my apologies if this is a duplicate, i never saw it come across. i'm really stuck. trying to set up a server with linux-linux and linux-windows shares. i can't seem to get a linux share built where cp -p won't issue the "preserving permissions for ... denied" message. the clients will have the share mounted system wide (script in rc.d) and all users to have r/w on the share. got rid of masks, removed the win shares and went back to simple. [nas3] security = user (this is actually in global) path = /storage valid users = nas3 lab force user = engr force group = users read only = No the use of masks for a linux share don't seem to be needed, but i must not be fully understanding something. any suggestions? server: v3.5.2-i486 (slackware 13.1) client: v3.5.4-5.3.1-x86_64 (opensuse 11.3)