Setting permission for multiple users to a directory
 

Hi,

I'm a linux newbie and I'm having trouble breaking down permissions in linux. Here's the scenario.

I have two users: UserA & UserB with each having to ownership and access to directories myDirA and myDirB respectively.

UserA --> /source/myDirA
UserB --> /source/myDirB

I need to set the permissions so that userA can access myDirA and myDirB. There are other users and directories but they should not be able to view outside of their own directories (which is the way it is now).

I don't have groups set up for them and I'd rather not change anything else but just the permissions.

rwxr_x_r_x UserA
rwxr_x_r_x UserB

They're read/write/exec permissions are identical.

Please help.

Thanks.

I think you should have a group of users to have access of a file to different users.
So create a group containing the users whom you want to access the files/directories and make respective file permission changes to those.
Also, have a look at man chown on how to achieve this.

HTH

You need to add UserA to the same group UserB is in.

thats easy
 

man, first of all, whenever you post a question on LQ, must mention you distro!

Now about your question, you should read about ACLs (Access Control Lists) on directory and files, lets say if you are using Red Hat Linux, the command is "setfacl" for setting up ACL on a particular directory,
type this command
this command will give read-write-execute permission to the userA on directory myDirB, you can setup permission to any directory like this regardless of what permissions and ownership you have already set on your directories.

This answer was just for help, you should read about ACLs in your distro and then you can set even more complex permissions in the future.
Regards

saifkhan123,
Thats really an important information.... :)
I tried that as below:
Actually I logged in as root and I want Ashok(a user) to access the directory srinivas/PerlEx/.
But it's not happening. Can you please help me?

First you should check that you have ACL package installed in your machine (it should be present already, just to confirm), for this type
it should show you the installed package and version, if not install the package through yum.

Also Read ACL details here
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/e...s-setting.html

hope this will help

I think I did the same as what the link you posted suggest. But why am I getting this problem "operation not supported"?

read my previous reply and do the "rpm -q", also post your /etc/fstab contents, as ACLs has much to do with the mounted partitions.

Please post the results of "mount". The filesystem type needs to support ACLs and you need to add the "acl" option to it's entry in /etc/fstab. But for only two users, what you want to do is done easily by creating a group for the purpose of sharing files in a directory. That is what groups are for. When you need to use acls, is when more users need access but that access is different. Suppose you have two users who can create files. A group of users who read the files they produce but don't have permission to create files in the directory.

Ok here is what you have requested for.
Please help me!

@ashok.g
 

try this
Now try your ACL command on a directory in /home, If that does the job add ",acl" to the mount options in /etc/fstab for Mount entries.

Change the mount options of your root partition to "defaults,acl".

I'm getting the same output even now. Do I need to restart any services for this to happen???

No ... ACL support should take effect automatically if you did the remount correctly. You're using ext2 ... according to my man page ext2 should support ACLs, but maybe you've got an older kernel. What distro and version are you using? I don't see why in this case, though, you would just create a group to do this as was mentioned above.

Actually this is not me who started this thread. But, I am just interested to know the different option (using setfacl) than the option I too mentioned(using groups).
I already mentioned my distro. For that please refer to above replies by me.
I run the command as:
so I edited the /etc/fstab file by making some entry as:
now my total /etc/fstab looks like:
I run the command again as:
Help me out please :(

What kind of system are you running? Your /home isn't assigned a device and isn't mounted.
Did you add the line with /home yourself? If so, remove it. If your home directory isn't under /home, then post the home directory field of your /etc/passwd file.

If /home is a directory of root (/) then add the acl option to the root partition. Without rebooting, you will need to mount the root partition manually with the `remount' option to change the mount options. Might as well reboot after correcting the /home line.

my home directory is under root itself.
Now I am getting that fine.
Thanks all for your replies and hope sen(the thread beginner) also clarified his doubts.

Happy posting LQ :):D:cool: