Why execution permission is required for Samba sharing?

[Javen]

Maybe it's too basic... I fixed the issue but just don't understand why.

 

I put my sharing folder to 644(chmod to grant only read/write permission to the owner, , just ignore later 2 bits) and use the exact same user to which I chown to access the Samba folder remotely. The issue appears that I can only see the first level parent folder content and can't navigate to the child folders. (On windows, it just return empty folders. On Mac, it reports permission deny explictly)

 

BTW, I have set the share to private in unraid and set the specific user have read/write permission(unraid permission,not linux) to the share.

 

Again I chmod all files to 755 by using chmod -R 755 *(Surely under the sharing folder), and the Samba sharing is OK now.

 

But why? Isn't that read and write permission(644, just ignore later 2 bits) enough? Why the execution bit is required to make SMB share functional?

[Kilrah]

Since a directory can't be executable the x bit is unneeded, and reused to allow/prevent access to the contents.

https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/21252

 

So while files are fine at 644 directories need the x bit set. 

Edited November 12, 2022 by Kilrah

[Javen]

13 hours ago, Kilrah said:

Since a directory can't be executable the x bit is unneeded, and reused to allow/prevent access to the contents.

https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/21252

 

So while files are fine at 644 directories need the x bit set. 

Thank you. I learn something new. I have to admit that I new basic operation of linux but not detail.