Let me explain the server and how I want things to work:

Server has an application with 10 instances running on it.
/var/hp/app1
/var/hp/app2
/var/hp/app3
etc.

Currently I have all folders owned by a user called 'admin' and all folders are assigned to the group 'suppadmin'

What I would like to do is create a user for each application. So a user would be created for app1 and that user would ONLY have access to the application running in /var/hp/app1.

The admin user would continue to have access to all /var/hp/ folders

what is the best way to accomplish this?

Hi, welcome to LQ!

Using POSIX only ...
Make admin member of suppadmin, and grant that group rwx on all files
in all directories, potentially make the group sticky (chmod -R g+s /var/hp/*).

Using ACLs ... depending on the file-system you chose on install you
may be able to use ACLs to accomplish what you're asking. man setfacl




Cheers,
Tink

1 members found this post helpful.

admin is already a member of suppadmin. I need to add new users that are only granted exclusive access. Sorry don't know what ACLs are.

Is there a diff organization of users/folders that accomplishes the same thing without the addon utils?

Well, if you make the main directories (/var/hp/app1, app2, and so forth)
owned by the respective app-user, and DON'T add them to suppadmin (and, of
course, make the directories o-rwx) you got what you wanted.