What is the best way to provide a common drop box for all users, so that any user that is a part of a particular group can read and write to and from the directory? I thought of creating a directory outside of the /home directory, creating a group specifically for accessing the directory, then adding all desired users to that group, and finally adding a symlink to the home directory of each user that points to the drop box folder. That seems like a lot of work. Is there a better way?
I'm running ubuntu 10.04 LTS.
Best Answer
I'm not quite sure if you want a drop bop for all users, which would imply that all users could write to it, or a drop box that some users can drop into but all users can read from. Assuming the latter:
1) Create a dir somewhere.
2) Create a group
3) Add users who you want to have write access to group
4) chgrp
5) chmod g+rws
6) chmod o+rx
The +s in the chmod will set the sticky bit which will cause all files/dirs that are created in to have the group and read/write perms for .