Question about File Permissions / Default groups

mortonmorton · 11-06-2009, 02:54 PM

Hi,
I created a folder named /projects. If I use a tool like NetBeans it defaults to the user and group I am using, so anything created on this folder goes under that permission. Now I want also another user to be able to touch those files like 'rwx', so I created a group which had those two users, then grant the group to the folder. Problem is everytime I create a file using the other user, I need to change also the group of that file so the other user can touch it. Is there a better way of doing this? Thanks.

i92guboj · 11-06-2009, 03:27 PM

RCS's are a way to solve this: git, svn, mercurial, bazaar, etc.

theNbomr · 11-06-2009, 04:05 PM

What is your umask setting? If it is removing group read/write privileges, then you can change it accordingly. The value of umask is a bitmap like the file permissions bitmap, but 'inverted'. A bit set in the umask prevents applications from allocating the accordant permission when creating files.
Example:

Code:

umask=0000
touch touch0000
umask=0022
touch touch0022
umask=0077
touch touch0077
ls -l
-rw-rw-rw-  1 thenbomr groupnbomr 0 Nov  6 13:57 touch0000
-rw-r--r--  1 thenbomr groupnbomr 0 Nov  6 13:56 touch0022
-rw-------  1 thenbomr groupnbomr 0 Nov  6 13:59 touch0077

Also, you can change the default group for each user. Make all members of a project have the same default group.
--- rod.

mortonmorton · 11-07-2009, 12:17 PM

Thanks for the replies. Yeah I thought of doing version controls but since I'm the only one using my PC, that would only create copies of the file for each user. I use the main user ( the one I login on X, to run my dev tools ), then I use the other user - oracle, to run db scripts ( which I code in my dev tool ) and other db admin tasks. So I just thought If I'd go for version control for that, then I'd have checkin/checkout for both users.

As for the umask, is it possible to set it on a folder level? I mean all files created under it will have grants base on the umask marked on it?

I think also one way of fixing this is to give the grants also to my login user so it can also do database admin tasks, not sure if that's possible though.

I'll do some more reading. Thanks again.

gerryd · 11-07-2009, 02:00 PM

as suggested by theNbomr you should change your umask

Code:

umask 0002

something similar to that.
make sure the group owner of the directory you created is the group you created, then add the SET GID special permission so objects created in the directory inherit its GID

Code:

 chmod 2775 /projects

the important part is the 2

mortonmorton · 11-07-2009, 05:29 PM

Thank you very much. That worked. It's much clearer now =)

This article also helped.