I have wiki running on my server. I have a friend that want to help me to change some files and he dont have any access to the server. So the soloution was to make a tar/gz of the whole wiki folder and send it to him so he can change and write to the files.

The question arrise later when he will re-pack (tar/gz) the folder again and send it back to me. How will the system react when some files have been modified on another system and no permission was preserved when doing the tarball? How should I take action when throwing in the new files so they adopt to the same permission structure as before? And If he creates a totally new file inside some folder that wasnt there before, how will this file be treated in my system?

/Lux

why not give him ssh access to the box?IIRC when you untar the file it should do so with your users permissions. i could be wrong, but i think that is how it works.again see above.

I'd untar it into a separate dir, and just copy up the changed files; he should have a list.
This way, the files will inherit the current settings.

You should definitely ensure you've got a backup before you do anything(!)

I'd set the setgid advance permissions on the directory. So that any file created or copied in the directory will have the directory permissions.

To set setgid use any of the below command

#chmod g+s /path

OR

#chmod 2752 /path
Regards,
Yogesh