[CentOS] Permission problem

Tue Jul 7 11:56:17 UTC 2009
Bo Lynch <blynch at ameliaschools.com>

On Tue, July 7, 2009 7:45 am, Niki Kovacs wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have to solve an apparently simple permission problem, and I don't
> know if it's the sunny weather or birdsong, well... I just can't figure
> it out. Here goes.
>
> I have a bunch of users in a public library. Some are "administrators":
> they handle the library, write the docs for everyone, etc. Then you have
> the "agents", who take care of lending books and fetch them when they
> get returned. And then you have the odd anonymous user, using the PC
> with a guest account.
>
> Let's make thing simple and start out with one machine. Every single
> user has a /home/<user> directory. Plus, I added the following
> directories:
>
> /home/pub
>
> and
>
> /home/echange
>
> Then, I created two groups, "administrators" and "agents". Here's what
> I'd like to achieve (but I think my IQ is just below the required limit
> :oD):
>
> 1) Members of the "administrators" group have unlimited read/write
> access to /home/pub and below.
>
> 2) Members of the "agents" group have read-only access to /home/pub and
> below.
>
> 3) All the others (that is, members of neither "administrators" and
> "agents") have no access at all to /home/pub, not even for listing the
> directory content.
>
> The thing is: I can't seem to formulate my problem in terms of
> user/group/others, as there are no owners, but two distinct groups
> involved.
>
> Any idea how to crack that nut?
>
> Niki
> _______________________________________________

You might want to use ACL's or access control lists to set multiple users
and groups with specific permissions. Take a look at
http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/LinuxTutorialManagingGroups.html. This is
a decent tutorial and I'm sure there are many others if you google linux
ACL's.
Hope this helps

Bo Lynch