[K12OSN] How to hide home folders

[Jennifer Waters <watersjenusa2002 yahoo com>]

I had this problem, in that I have to use the first
initial of the first name, the first initial of the
last name, and student ID number for home folders and
passwords.  This was creating quiet a problem in that
anyone could see all of the home folders if they went
into the home directory.  

I was able to get some help and this is the solution
we can up with to only allow the individual to see
their own folder and not have permissions to see
anyone else's.

Steps to accomplish first:

1.  Ensure that you have a generic user group.
    Named my group users.
    Ensure that each student has an account.
    Each student account on the machine should be a
     member of the users group.
2.  On the home directory ( /home? the mask is:  711
3.  The user is root
    The group is users
4.  On Setgid files do not inherit group (Box is
     unchecked.
    Apply changes on this directory only.
    Sticky is unchecked.
5.  This means that students can cd to /home, but
     cannot list its contents.  They can traverse to
     this point in the path and can go down further
     into the file system tree as well.
6.  The permissions on /home/jc334455 are:  770
     User id jc334455
     Group is jc334455
     Sticky is unchecked
     Setgid is unchecked
     Apply changes to this directly only
7.  Configure each home directory in this manner.
8.  Tell students that they must enter the full path
     to their home directory where ever its needed
     (Save paths, command line, etc) or they will get
     a permission denie error.
9.  For example:
    /home/jc334455/filename.txt
    In this test, students can only see the contents
    of their own home directory.  This is the only
    directory they can write files to or delete files
    from.  They can not cd into another users home
    directory or list another users home directory
    content. They can not list the contents of home.
    The only stipulation is that they must use a full
    path statement to get to their directory. 
    Basically other users and their work are completly
    invisible to a specific user.

Hope this will help anyone that has had the same
problem that I came across.  It is not the best way to
do something, but it is a great workaround.

Jennifer



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