[Sussex] Unix file permissions question

[sussex at welikegoats.com]

ext2 supports ACLs. Have a look at man lsattr.

--
andrewh at welikegoats dot com

On Wed, 31 Dec 2003, Tony Austin wrote:

> I want to be able to set permissions on a directory such that group (a)
> has read-only access and group (b) has read-write access.
>
> Possibilities that I have considered include:-
>
> 1.  multiple symbolic links to the folder - but permissions are not
> recognised on symbolic links
> 2.  multiple hard links - but this seems to be difficult if not impossible
> to do and seems to lead to a multitude of other problems
> 3.  two layers of directories so that the upper layer has read-only and
> the lower layer has read-write - this is not practical in my apllication
> as I cannot alter the existing directory structure
>
> I have Googled extensively on this and find that I am not the the first to
> come across this dilemma.  The usual answer seems to be something like
> "You shouldn't need more than one set of group permisssions because I have
> never found it necessary in the 999 years that I have been using Unix.
> There is usually another way of doing what you need to do."
>
> Unfortunately none of these sages has actually suggested what some of the
> alternatives might be.
>
> The only other answer seems to be on the lines of  "It's an application
> problem, if your application doesn't handle it you could install software
> to handle ACLs."  Well maybe, but this seems a bit heavy-handed.
>
> Anyone her got any ideas?
>
> Regards.
>
> Tony Austin
> Gigaday Computing Limited
> http://www.gigaday.com
> tony at gigaday.com
>
>
>
> "Drug therapies are replacing a lot of medicines as we used to know it."
>
> George W. Bush
> October 17, 2000
> Comments from St. Louis, Missouri Presidential Debate.
>
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