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Old 09-05-2005, 11:29 AM   #1
mikemrh9
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File Permissions, X and Groups


Hi.

I'm finding managing file permissions rather frustrating in linux after having come from a windows background.

I have 2 questions. Firstly, is it possible to nest groups in linux? (A bit of a long shot, as I'm fairly sure that the answer is 'no'!)

Secondly, are there any X based utilities available which allow you to manage more complex permissions, ie allowing you to carry out the same tasks as with getfacl/setfacl? (This must be possible, as I understand that you can set permissions on a Samba server through the GUI on an NT based machine?)

I am currently finding that permissions management in an enterprise scenario is rather labourious and time consuming compared to windows, and would be very pleased to find an efficient GUI alternative to setfacl.

Mike.
 
Old 09-05-2005, 04:23 PM   #2
spooon
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1. I don't think so.

2.
In my opinion, GUIs are inherently inefficient and time-consuming. The command line is SO much more powerful and allows me to do a series of extremely complicated tasks in one line that would take me minutes or hours in a GUI. I don't understand why you insist on a GUI.

The command line has very good tools for dealing with permissions and stuff - "chmod", "chown", etc. to change permissions and ownership and "ls -l" to view permissions and stuff. You can apply these recursively or combine them with other commands to do basically anything.
 
Old 09-05-2005, 05:36 PM   #3
mikemrh9
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Thanks for your reply. For the most part, I agree with you, and do most of my configuration through the command line. However, in my experience, management of permissions for multiple users and groups seems far more efficient in windows. Granted, if you just want to assign a few permissions to a couple of users, using setfacl does not take very long to do.

However, I do find permissions management rather slow and cumbersome compared to the NT method of clicking a group and ticking off the permissions accordingly. This also gives a more instant view of which permissions are currently set, as opposed to the linux 'ls-l', which simply tells you with a '+' that you need to use getfacl to see what permissions have actually been assigned.

Both NT and Novell's ConsoleOne have a very useful 'effective rights' button and instant GUI view of summarised permissions at a glance, which like it or not, saves time when managing a lot of permissions to multiple groups, if only due to the fact that a couple of mouse clicks is faster than editing the contents of the bash_history buffer. I realise that the approach to permissions management is slightly different between the 2 systems, but I can't help feeling that in this case that
a) The command line seems lacking with respect to other vendor's GUI alternatives.
b) Linux permission management seems less flexible than the alternatives.

(I don't want this second point to start a flaming session - for the most part I find Linux extremely flexible, I'm simply stating my opinions based on my own experience of permissions management!)

For the most part, the GUI is only slow as you wait for dialogue boxes to open, but on a server with 2GB RAM this is not much of an issue. If the server is running on an internal network, there is no major security risk to leave it in runlevel 5 anyway.

As far as efficiency of management is concerned, I personally find it quicker to set up basic services through the GUI, and then perform any fine tuning from the console. Obviously, as in all OS's (ie Microsoft and the registry editor), not everything can be done through the GUI, as provision of all the relevant check-boxes would remove the simplicity provided. This difference is more pronounced under Linux, as there are far more configuration options available.

Granted, there are certain tasks that are quicker from the console, but try setting up apache with 4 different virtual directories through SuSE's YaST tool, then through the console, then tell me which is quicker! Similarly I think you would find the installation of a DNS server and 3-4 zones full of resource records considerably faster through YaST. It doesn't matter if you use the GUI or ncurses version of YaST, it's still a damn sight quicker than manually editing config files in my opinion. I find it quicker to set up the basic service through the GUI, then fine tune it later from the console. (For example, configuring user authentication and SSL on your apache virtual directories).

Back to the point! For a simple setup, it would be nice to have the option under the GUI to set all the file permissions available, as after all, setting permissions for file access is a fairly basic configuration task. For example, let's assume that you have multiple administrators all managing the same systems. One goes to all the trouble of painstakingly setting all the correct permissions through setfacl at the command prompt, then another comes along and views the permissions through, for example, Konqueror. The second administrator would have no idea that the extended attributes and permission sets had been applied, and could trash the original administrators work without having any idea that anything untoward had happened. "Don't give him rights!", I hear you cry, but unfortunately, in the world of politics and small training budgets, this is not always possible. (I'm not citing SuSE in particular, it's just that this is the distro I have the most experience with.)

Anyway, I seem to be getting carried away. I was only idly wondering if a GUI utility for manging extended ACL permissions was available for X. If it's not here now, maybe it will arrive some time in the near future. We can always hope!

Last edited by mikemrh9; 11-21-2005 at 03:43 PM.
 
Old 09-08-2005, 10:10 PM   #4
Capt_Caveman
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Moved: This thread is more suitable in the Linux - Software forum and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.
 
  


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