Permissions: Three users, each with a personal folder and different permissions to a common folder

[shan81]

Hi Everybody,

I've decided to rebuild my server from scratch and I'm trying to get my head around the permissions, users and groups used by Unix.

What I'm trying to achieve:

Three users, each with a personal folder, each with different levels of permissions to a a common folder.

My plan is to have three users.

The first user called 'Bob' - The administrator will have Read, Write and Execute (R-W-X) permissions to his personal folder and to the personal folders of the other two users. In addition, he needs R-W-X permissions to the common folder.

The second user, 'Jes' will need R-W-X permissions to her personal folder too and R-W permissions to the common folder.

The third user, ol 'Gil' only needs R-W permissions to their personal folder and read-only permissions to the common folder.

How I'm planning to achieve it:

First, create the volume, lets call it 'freenas'.

Under the volume, we create four datasets.

Dataset 1 - Bob's personal folder called 'bob'.
Dataset 2- Jes' personal folder called 'jes'
Dataset 3- Gil's personal folder called 'gil'
Dataset 4 - the common folder, we'll call it 'common'

Next, lets create some groups.

Group 1- the user group called 'user'
Group 2 - the guest group, called 'guest'

After that, lets create some users and add them to the groups.

User 1- 'bob' - He's added to the 'user' group and 'guest' group.
User 2- 'jes' - Is added to the 'user' and 'guest' group too.
User 3 - 'gil' - Add him to the 'guest' group.

Now lets view the dataset permissions now and change them to suit each user.

Dataset 1 - Bob's personal folder - We don't want anybody else having access to this folder apart from Bob, so we change the owner to 'bob' and the group to 'nogroup'.

Dataset 2 - Jes' personal folder - We make the owner 'jes' and the group 'user' - This will give Jess ownership and give Bob the access he needs.

Dataset 3 - Gil's personal folder - Make the owner 'gil' and the group 'user' - This will give both Bob & Jes access to Gil's personal folder.

Dataset 4 - The common folder, make the owner 'bob' and the group 'user'. The 'other' permission changed to read only - This will give Gil the abilty to view files, but not create new files or delete existing files in common folder.

The Question:

Will this achieve what I want to do?

I've spent a bit of time thinking about it but I'd like an expert to let me know if there is a better way to do this.

Thanks!

 

[shan81]

I've got somewhere with it but I'm still having problems with 'Jes' and 'Gil'.

Both cannot view files on the 'common' dataset and 'Jes' cannot create files on the 'common' dataset.

 

[shan81]

I got it working.

I needed to change the permissions on the 'common' folder to owner: 'bob' group: 'user'. Mode: owner - RWX. Group: RX. Other: RX.

I'll do up a diagram and post it here later to explain it better.

 

[shan81]

I changed 'Jes' access to read-only on the 'common' dataset; as this was the only way I could get the sharing working.

For me thought, it's of minor concern.

 

[boyett]

@shan81
Thank you very much.. :D

 

[Robert Smith]

Hello,

Thank you for the detailed explanation. I copied your configuration. Here is what I am observing:

Using CIFS; if Jes connects to the Jes dataset share first, she gets full access (include write permissions) on all other datasets as well. Are you observing the same thing?