How to allow all users access to one folder?

[ScottyK]

I have a netbook that I'm going to give to my kids. I want all of them to have thier own login's and /home directory. I also want to create a folder somewhere and fill it with thier music and movies, so all of them can access it.

What do I call this shared folder, where do I place it in the file system, and what do I do for permissions?

Thanks!

[oshunluvr]

Many ways to do this - it is Linux after all...

Here's my suggestion(s): You notice a folder in everyone's home called "Public". You could delete that and make a symlink to a new folder called Public and give them all access to it (permissions 777) and fill it with folders for Music, Videos, etc. Then they could keep personal music/videos in their respective homes and share when desired. I would put it under /home.

You could "force" all pictures, videos, music, etc. to be shared by doing the above with all the folders you want shared.

The interesting part is file ownership and permissions. So Bobby copies his favorite song to the shared Music folder, but Sally hates it. Can she delete it? Should she be able to?

The simplest way is to not let Sally have permission to do that. As long as your umask allows "others" to read file they should be able to play each others music but not delete it.

Other solutions could be a separate shared partition. You could force all files added to the public folders to take on a specified set of permissions and even ownership.

I have a family server and I have the shared folders all change the file ownership to "nobody" and to a special group called "share". Then logged in users that are in the "share" group can delete or edit files, but anonymous users can read only. Thus my family can use the filesystem fully but guests can only view (or play) files. I realize this is overkill for your situation but it illustrates how far you can take if you want to.

[ScottyK]

First suggestion is the best, to simply use simlinks for Public and go from there. Their music collections is small enough that they can all have them in their own home directories, but I was wanting to prevent a copy of each movie in their home directories.

Thanks!

[andystmartin]

There's another permission for the shared directory that might be helpful. If the permission of the shared directory is set to "1777" using chmod, all users can create files and directories under the shared directory but only the owner can delete them. This is the permission used by "/tmp". ...though I would not use /tmp for shared music...