File Permissions

[Mike Bond]

Easy to understand article for those that are new to unix file
permissions:
http://www.webmonkey.com/tutorial/Modify_User_Permissions

One thing that drives me crazy with file permissions on unix, compared
to windows, is how inflexible they are out of the box. On windows file
permissions are extremely flexible, and offer outstanding group
support. On linux you get 1 group, 1 owner, and everyone else. On
windows you can assign based on an unlimited number of individuals or
groups (or, at least, i have never seen a limit).

I know the same level can be achieved on linux using ACLs, but it
strikes me as a bit of a hack and doesn't work out of the box. My
solution has been to create specific groups and add/remove people from
those groups as needed. But often that leads to creating more groups
than are really needed.

If group A needs access to Files X, Y, and Z
and Person B need access to file Y but canNOT have access to X an Z
and Files X and Y are in Directory M and file Z in in Directory N
and Group A should only have access to File Z in Directory N and list
access on the rest of the files
And Group C needs access to all the files in Directory N

Its possible to do with some creative group creations, using only the
default linux file permissions. But, its not a whole lot of fun.

Everyone is always caught up in the user experience holding linux
back ... when in reality i think its more low-level than that. File
Permissions being one of those problems.

Mike.
mb...@the-forgotten.org

[stev...@gmail.com]

I like this one. I saw it earlier in the day, but I still haven't taken the time to read it yet. After coming home to check on the dogs, me & the wifey took advantage of our last chance at a student-free wing night at bee dubz.

But this is the kind of stuff I wanna learn about. The basics, *nix fundamentals, best practices, security, scripting, programming, commands, and so on & so forth. I r teh n00bz, at least somewhat with computers, but especially with Linux. I broke into this world with Ubuntu, after trying Mandrake earlier & not doing much with it, & even then I didn't get my start until Dapper Drake. So things were pretty much wash-n-wear and I didn't have to learn much to get up & running. I'm learning, but stuff pretty much "just works" so I'm not forced to learn very quickly most of the time.

But I love tinkering & learning how things work. A whole bunch of you guys have forgotten more about Linux than I've ever even heard of. Whatever you guys wanna share, I'm excited to hear about it.

So if it's not obvious by now, I'm a chronic procrastinator & this is my feedback from the first meeting. Here are some things I would be interested in, if anyone has the chops for it:

--OpenBIOS

--HowTo get involved with open source projects (I know that one's extremely general, but I'm not a programmer [yet] so it's not so obvious [yet] for me)

--How the _____ works, and what can typically get fubar'd.

--Scripts/tips/tools show & tell. A chance to share a ____ that really comes in handy, saved your keister, or is just plain awesomtastic.

That's about all that comes to mind before I pass out. Thoughts?







BTW, did anyone else try to dist-upgrade their persistent pendrive to 8.04.1? Did it bork itself right when it was upgrading sudo? I've already fixed mine by doing a clean install with the dot one ISO, but wondering if anyone else ran into this and/or why that happened.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Bond <mb...@the-forgotten.org>

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2008 11:05:10
To: <mor...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: File Permissions