Joseph Martin wrote:
> I am having trouble understanding aspects of file/directory permissions. I
> know how to make file readable, writeable, etc., but am having trouble
> with advanced aspects. For instance I once read that you can create a user
> called backup and use it to backup the whole disk. The idea was to give
> backup read-only access to the whole disk.
This can't generally be made to work; only root is guaranteed to be
able to access all files. Maybe you misunderstood what you read.
> How can you give a specific user certain permissions on files? What
> exactly are groups used for?
Groups are used for giving specific permissions to a group of people
without giving those permissions to everyone.
E.g. if you want to give a specific user write access to a file:
1. Create a new group (in /etc/groups), or use an existing group
2. Add the user to that group
3. Change the group of the file to the newly created group (with chgrp
or chown)
4. Make the file group writable (`chmod g+w filename')
--
Glynn Clements <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
