Re: 5 newbie Linux users & one shared media folder?

[Teemu Likonen <tlikonen@iki.fi>]

On 2009-08-26 13:34 (-0500), Ron Johnson wrote:

> On 2009-08-26 12:11, Nick Lidakis wrote:
>> I'm attempting to setup a Debian Linux/Gnome laptop for a friend, his
>> wife, and their 4 kids. Each has a home folder that is private to the
>> rest. They have small collection of music & photos that they would
>> like to share. What's the most efffective way to accomplish this?
>> This is a non-networked machine, i.e., no NFS, etc.
>>
>> Can I have a media folder in /home without making a user called
>> media?
>>
>> Do I mkdir this folder elswhere?
>
> I'd create /shared/data with rw permission granted to group "family",
> then add each meatsack user to group family.

Let's also remember that new files added to such directory have creator
user's default group. If they want to share such files as read-writable
for others they need to "chgrp family file" and "chmod g+w file" (or
similar through GUI). This may be too much hassle for non-technical
people.

If one wants to make this more automatic then perhaps "g=rwxs" bits for
such shared directory and "family" as the group:

    mkdir /home/media
    chgrp family /home/media
    chmod g=rwxs /home/media

Now new files created under /shared directory will automatically have
"family" group. There is still the feature/problem that new files have
u=rw,g=r,o=r permissions so other family members don't have write access
for new files automatically. Setting default umask 0002 for all users
will have them create files with u=rw,g=rw,o=r permissions.

But of course I don't know what kind of default permission settings the
family members actually prefer and what is "too much technical hassle"
for them.