How do you create a user with read and write access to another user's home directory

I am new to Linux and need some help how I can create a user with some special rights.

I have read a few articles and "how Linux permissions work" but have not yet understood how it works in practice.

I want to create a user that does not get any rights to use "su / sudo" or have any read / write access to the rest of the system in addition to its own home directory. Besides this, then that users have rights to read, write and modify another specified user's home directory.

Is this possible? An explanation and the necessary commands appreciated tremendously :)

The "read/write to the rest of the system"-part is not mandatory. The important part is the read/write/modify access to another user's homefolder.

Simon

Posted 2012-05-28T11:16:06.250

Reputation: 1

Please specify in more detail what you are trying to achieve. Some of what you describe is fairly easy but some of it is unclear. By default (on most distributions) users do not have right to execute sudo. But the rest of that paragraph is not very clear. Again by default users can read/write only their own home directories. If you need users to share files etc. it's probably most convenient to create a "global" directory owned by a dedicated group and assign the users to that group. You can achieve the same with several options, which one is best depends on what you want to achieve. – Bram – 2012-05-28T11:21:19.707

Alright. Forget about the sudo part since I configured a "allowed sudoers" instead.

I already have som services up and running which works in a existing homefolder. It would be best practice to create another global folder instead, however, it will take alot of time to reconfigure my running services.

I added all the users who shall have permissions to the folder in a group.

Scenario; anders owns the folder /home/anders/. The group "research" should also have full access to /home/anders. Anders should still have same permissions as always.

Regards – Simon – 2012-05-28T11:49:46.290

I kinda know how to do it, (through some googling regarding permissions) but Im not sure, and really don't want to mess up the existing persmissions for the user "anders" since some services is already up and running. – Simon – 2012-05-28T11:57:12.597

Files used by a group shouldn't be in any of the group members' home directory. A user's home dir is "private" because it contains things no other user should be able to access. As an example a lot of configuration files might contain passwords and other private data. Granting other users access is inviting a world of pain and other security risks. It is a lot easier and more importantly safer to create a directory for research and grant anders and the other members of the "research" team (group) access to that directory. As for services they are best to run from /opt, /var or /usr/local. – Bram – 2012-05-28T13:11:59.523

Is the "specified user" used only for the purpose of holding this shared directory? If so, just give all the users who should have access to the specified user the right to sudo to that specified user. That will give them all that user's rights, including the rights to their home directory. (Which should be all they have.) – David Schwartz – 2012-05-28T13:13:23.147

I know its far from best practice, and I know its totally wrong to do it this way. However, it will take approx 1 day to reconfigure, and this machine doesn't run any crucial stuff so it's not that important that it "has to be done the right way". The user folder only store some data, and works with files added to a folder in "anders" home dir. And yes, this user is only used for the purpose to hold the share directory. None of the users in research group, or "anders" actually does anything on the server. @Bram – Simon – 2012-05-28T20:54:21.627

Anders runs some services, which save and work with files in his home dir. The users in "research"-group only connect via sFTP to read/write/modify files in the home folder. Which I guess, i can't just add the group to be able to sudo "anders" since it won't work via sFTP. @DavidSchwartz – Simon – 2012-05-28T20:54:39.147

That changes what you want to achieve, which is why I recommended you to clearly write the purpose of the server and accounts. Don't take this wrong but you really should make the effort to set the system up right. A day's work may seem like a lot now but in a couple of months from now when you need to fix something after you've added all sorts of additional services etc. to this system you'll find yourself spending much much more time than that. I'll write a short answer that should allow what you need. – Bram – 2012-05-29T07:14:08.577

How do you create a user with read and write access to another user's home directory

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