Permissions Questions

JHuizingh · 01-16-2003, 11:26 AM

I am in charge of setting up a server for a class that I am in, and I am trying to figure out how to do something the instructor wants. He wants to set it up so that he has an account that will be able to look at the files in every student's home directories, but other students won't be able to look. How will I set this up?

trickykid · 01-16-2003, 11:46 AM

Though we don't necessarily like to do peoples homework or study work for them as the instructor probably wants you to learn this yourself instead of being told how to do it:

I'll give you some pointers.

man chmod
man chgrp
man chown

Create a group that your instructor belongs to, change the group ownership of your /home directory to that group. And make sure you have read access assigned to the group. And then make the world ( which is everyone who is not you or in that group ) have no read or write access.. etc.

JHuizingh · 01-16-2003, 01:48 PM

This isn't the assignment... I'm the only student administering the server that will be used for the class.

I was thinking something along the lines of what you are saying, students shouldn't be able to read each other's home directories. I'm wondering, if all students are members of this group, won't they be able to read each other's home directories? Is it possible to assign group ownership to a group you are not a member of?

kmistry · 01-16-2003, 02:23 PM

youd probably want to make a *group* called "teacher" and then set permissions for that so he cannot access some system devices/blocks but read students things. basically he has read/write access to everything in /home.

also trickykid is right, read those man pages and you'll be wiser.

i strongly suggest against giving the teach root access. unless he/her are linux experianced and know what they are doing.

jschiwal · 01-16-2003, 02:41 PM

If the teacher has root access, he could read anything he wants.

Or... If you are a student with a username of mikej you are also a member of the group mikej. So you could make the teacher a member of each student's group. A lot of groups I know, but you don't have to add a group to each student.