Ubuntu Server 8: Managing users & groups: How to?

[Robert Dailey]

On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 7:15 PM, Robert Steinmetz <rob at steinmetznet.com>
wrote:

>  Robert Dailey wrote:
>
> I have a question also about basic file permissions.
>
> Keep in mind I've been in Microsoft land for all my life, and I realize you
> guys get pretty pissed off when I refer to linux stuff using Windows
> terminology. However I hope you'll bear with me, I'm still learning.
>
> From what I can tell, each file or directory on the system can have a user
> AND a group associated with it. This doesn't make much sense to me. If I'm
> user 'foo', and I have a group named 'test' which I am in, and I assign the
> following to a file:
>
> USER: foo
> GROUP: test
>
> I've technically been added to this file 2 times, so which permissions does
> the system choose for me? The ones from the group that I'm in, or the user
> permissions? It would make more sense to add *only* groups to files and
> directories, things would seem more consistent that way. I don't see a point
> in just assigning a single user as  a special case, when all you really need
> to do is assign a group with only 1 user in it.
>
> Each user can be in more than one group user foo can be in group test, and
> also group help for example, using that you can allow people access to
> subsystems as necessary.
>
> Using user access you  can prevent access to any files for anyone except
> owner.
>
> Classic Unix permissions can be read write and execute. There are thee sets
> of permission for each file user, group and other. There are represented as
> rwxrwxrwx so a hierarchy of access can be arranged. The user (owner) may
> have read write and execute permissions and the group may have read and
> execute permission which everyone else can be completely excluded from
> access.
> that would show up in the listing rwxr-x---
>
> That is a very simple overview.
>
> I hope it helps
>

So then user permissions override the group permissions, if the owner
happens to be in a group as well as the user for a file?

What's the reason for 9 digits in the access rights string? I'm assuming the
first 3 digits are access rights for the owner (user) and the second 3
digits are for group rights. I'm not sure what the final 3 could be for. Am
I close?
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/attachments/20080630/53a3297a/attachment.html>