[Techtalk] Protecting spouse, kids from each other and limitingaccess

[Jenn Vesperman]

On Sat, 2002-09-28 at 07:07, Alvin Goats wrote:
> It now all makes sense. Unfortunately, the literature I have and read
> don't link all the pieces together in order. It's like having a list of
> ingredients to make yeast bread, you know you have to mix it and bake
> it, but no detailed instructions about kneading and rising, which goes
> first...
> 
> The book I have spent a page discussing chmod with hexadecimal, octal,
> adding numbers but nothing about how it plays with chgrp. chgrp talks
> about how to change group ownership of a file or directory, but not how
> it relates to the rest. groupadd and adduser talked about setting file
> permissions, but the way it was worded suggests that the files are set
> in /etc/groups. The man pages and FAQ's discuss everything more in terms
> of how the individual programs work independently from each other, not
> in a serially threaded fashion.
> 
> Bear with me now. Sequence of events to "bake yeast bread":
> 
> 
> 1) groupadd to get group on file
> 
> 2) adduser to get the user on file and added to group

You can add the group later, if you wish, then add the user to the
group. You can also edit /etc/groups manually. 
But this sequence would work.

> 3) chgrp to directories/files to individually/recursively set group's
> directory/file ownership privileges

chown sets the owner
chgrp sets the group
Neither actually sets the permissions on the file, just the ownership.
 
> 4) chmod to directories/files to individually/recursively include groups
> readable, writeable, executable  privileges

Preeeeeee-zactly. :)

(non-english speakers: that's wordplay for 'exactly'.)

> 
> Now if they'd only put it that plainly.

You're most welcome.

You are aware that you can file documentation bug reports?



Jenn V.
-- 
    "Do you ever wonder if there's a whole section of geek culture 
        	you miss out on by being a geek?" - Dancer.

jenn at anthill.echidna.id.au     http://anthill.echidna.id.au/~jenn/