[K12OSN] Student problem

[Les Mikesell]

On Wed, 2004-04-28 at 14:36, Jim Kronebusch wrote:
> I would like to add to the original question #1.  When making the drop
> folder you are only able to specify an owner and a group.  I am a little
> frustrated with both OS X and Linux in the fact that you are limited to
> only setting permissions for one additional group.  Problem is that I
> have a folder with the "student" group set to write only, "root" is the
> owner with full privilege, now I want to give the "teacher" group
> read/write privileges...oops...too bad...I can only specify one group.
> Is this truly a limit with Linux or do the gui's limit to only single
> group privileges. 

Traditional unix filesystems only store the owner/group numbers and
the permission bits for those plus everyone else - it isn't the GUI
that restricts this.  Note that your problem comes from wanting
a 'group' of owners, though.  If each drop is owned by a single
teacher, or you make an extra login to own it and give the password
to the appropriate people you get the sets of permissions you need
and they will stay put with most copy/backup/restore methods.
Newer filesystems permit exceptions to the policies through ACL's
but in general if you need a lot of exceptions it indicates something
is wrong with the policy and if you use them you'll need special
support every time you think about moving things.

---
  Les Mikesell
   les at futuresource.com