Hello

I´m a newbie to Linux but have bought a Raspberry Pi 3 and like to build a permission structure centered on groups not users and resources like printers for example.

I worked as a CNE consultant for many years and there it looked something like this:

1. Every user had their home directory like in Linux.
2. Every user was a member of a group named everyone.
3. Different groups were created for different tasks like economy, ITsupport, printers and so on.
4. Rights for the groups were assigned to directories and printers.

I would like to do something like this. I have tried the chmod and chown commands but I fail to get to grips with the big picture.

Tia Leslie

Hi,

You may want to consider using file access list mechanism. It allows You to create more complex permission structure.

Check setfacl and getfacl commands.

Cheers

This short explanation may help.
Users (aka user records in /etc/passwd) must have a unique userid (aka uid) and each user must belong to at least one group.
See useradd/adduser cmds.

The trick in your case is to design and create the groups first (groupadd/addgroup cmds) and then create the users into those groups.
See /etc/group.
As noted, each user must have a 'primary' group (as seen in /etc/passwd rec), but you can add them (usermod/moduser cmds) in to multiple groups.
This info appears in /etc/groups as you add the memberships.

Last but not least, files (inc dirs which are files in Linux) can be accessed through 3 sets of permissions: owner (aka user), group, other (aka world).
Each of these eg user perms consist of a combination of r (read), w(write), x (execute for files, search for dirs) in that order eg

See the 'ls -l' cmd and spend some time reading up on all the cmds I've mentioned so far.

I've never really setup printers by group, but its likely do-able. I'm sure someone else will coma along and explain or you can try google.
Feel free to rtn here with more qns.

HTH & Welcome to LQ (I used to Admin Novell v2 & V3 back in the day).

PS: You can find plenty of manuals/books free to read online @ http://www.linuxtopia.org/