Re: [gentoo-user] OT: Filesystem permissions

[Florian Philipp <lists@f_philipp.fastmail.net>]

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On Thu, 3 Jul 2008 17:52:29 +0200
Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thursday 03 July 2008, Florian Philipp wrote:
> > Hi list!
> >
> > I'm a bit dissatisfied with the way umask and filesystem permissions
> > work and I'd like to know if a) this is due to misunderstanding on
> > my part and/or b) there is a clean workaround I'm unaware of.
> >
> > Let's say I have a system with various users working on some
> > sensible data. Therefore I have to set up various security policies
> > regarding file permissions and so forth.
> >
> > For example every $HOME-directory should be only readable to the
> > user himself (e.g. for user phil_fl: chown phil_fl:phil:fl; umask
> > 0077 or 0007).
> >
> > Then there might be a common folder for all users in a specific
> > group as a simple way of sharing files. These shall be accessible
> > by every user in the group but by none else, so for the user
> > phil_fl and the group users: chown phil_fl:users; umask 0007.
> >
> > As we see, the umask itself isn't the problem (in this special case)
> > but the group is it, however, there might be cases in which need to
> > change both for special folders. How do I do this without needing
> > any interaction from the users?
> 
> umask does nothing for you here, it is simply a default starting
> point for the permissions of new files and directories and the user
> is completely free to change it to anything they feel like.
> 
> Yes, this is by design. Yes, this is a very good thing :-)
> 
> You want to set the setgid bit on the containing directory and chgrp 
> that directory to the group involved.

Argh, of course!
I even read this stuff up this morning but I overlooked the paragraph!

Thanks!

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