You lost me on how having HFS allows you to take files. And what does httpd have to do with anything?
The sharing option, if I'm thinking about the same thing would allow them to offer a directory in their own directory as a samba share or via a web service.
You could still have a share setup where they can save files.
If you mean that you need to access their home directories, as the instructor, but you don't have root access, you can use a Linux filesystem and use "setfacl" to allow yourself read access to the files & read/execute access to the directories.
I'll assume that your username is "prata".
sudo setfacl -m g:u:prata:rx /home/ /home/*/
Will give you read/execute access to the /home partition and the students home directories.
Note: If there are other teachers with home directories under /home, then do this for only the students home directories. Not the other teachers!
E.G.
Code:
for student in mike, sally, billy, thomas; do
sudo setfacl -m d:u:prata:rx /home/$student/
done
Perhaps you just want access to the /home/$student/html/ directory.
Code:
for student in mike, sally, billy, thomas; do
sudo setfacl -m u:prata:rx /home/$student/
sudo setfacl -m d:u:prata:rw /home/$student/html
sudo setfacl -m u:prata:r /home/$student/html
done
Notice the d: in "setfacl -m
d:u:prata:r /home/$student/html". It creates a default ACL for new files that a students creates. This gives you read access to the file. You may also need to insert the lines:
sudo setfacl -R -m u:prata:r /home/$student/html/*
sudo setfacl -R -m u:prata:rx /home/$student/html/*/
to change the ACLs of the files and directories already present before you made the changes. The older files don't have the ACL settings you need.
For access using Samba, your user needs permission in the samba setup. Your user also needs permission on the filesystem itself. This is what setting the ACLs will do.
Otherwise, you would need to allow "o" (other) read permissions, which would allow sharing when logged in.
If they can't log in (shell account), then you could configure samba to only allow "%U" and "prata" permission to the service. Using a [Profile] service rather than a [Homes] services would work best for this. Only the users own home directory would show up in the browser by clicking on the Server icon.
Instead of "Profile", it would be their own Home directory.
rata:rx /home/ /home/*/
