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I have a folder /home/samantha/folder that I want to share with the user tom. He can read/write the folder. How do I do that?
chown wouldn't do it because I still want to be able to be the owner of the folder. I don't see how to do this with chmod either.
Zenet
Posted 2011-01-19T18:05:56.637
Reputation: 665
61
If you are using Linux with a relatively modern filesystem (ext3/ext4, btrfs, ntfs), this can be done with POSIX ACLs:
Enable ACLs for the filesystem. This is only necessary for ext3 and ext4 on kernels older than 2.6.38. All other filesystems that support ACLs enable them automatically.
mount -o remount,acl /
tune2fs -o acl /dev/<partition>
Give tom access to the folder:
setfacl -m user:tom:rwx /home/samantha/folder
If the OS or the filesystem does not support ACLs, another way is to use groups.
Create a group.
Some Linux distributions create a separate group for each user: tom would automatically be in a group also named tom.
If not, create a group. This should work on Linux...
groupadd tom
gpasswd -a tom tom
...and this - on BSD:
groupadd tom
usermod -G tom tom
chgrp the directory to that group, and give permissions with chmod:
chgrp tom /home/samantha/folder
chmod g+rwx /home/samantha/folder
user1686
Posted 2011-01-19T18:05:56.637
Reputation: 283 655
2
Add both users to a common group. Make that group own the directory, and assign group permissions as needed.
And tom will also need execute permission on /home/samantha to be able to reach /home/samantha/folder. – Lord Loh. – 2015-07-16T17:20:54.353
FWIW, the OP added an additional answer instead of commenting. He/she has a question about your solution. Thanks. – None – 2012-12-07T03:32:04.290