http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/3916/
Example: Alice and Bob uses the same computer. Alice has read access to Bob's home folder. Bob has read access to Alice's home folder. They want to fully share (read/write) their music. So they should ideally create /home/music folder, put all the music there and use it. Everything Bob puts into there, Alice should be able to read and remove, and vice versa. This is currently impossible in Ubuntu. Bob has to manually fix permissions every time Alice wants to delete something Bob's (Bob creates /home/music/Britney, but Alice can't delete /home/music/Britney/song1.mp3).

I have discussed this issue with several linux gurus and there is currently no easy nor difficult way to achieve this in Linux on the same (ext3) partition. With every proposed solution I can give you counterexample (group permissions, ACLs, local Samba, local NFS, etc - there is always problem when moving files). There would have to be created utility to set shared folders and some daemon would have to monitor changes and modify permissions.

Currently the easiest solution known for me is to share files on separate (ironically) NTFS partition, because when mounting NTFS you can force user/group/permissions on file access. What a shame, we use Microsoft technologies just to share files between Ubuntu users.

This problem is quite serious, give it a thought or two. Everyone who is not using Ubuntu computer alone and wants to share music/films/etc between multiple users knows what I am talking about.

//New info:
Atany has proposed in the comment that BindFS project can be used to achieve this functinality:
http://code.google.com/p/bindfs/
I have tried it and it works very well. Developers which would like to implement this idea should have a look on BindFS, it's very promising tool, it could provide all necessary background for this.

[948 votes] Solution #1: Auto-generated solution of idea #3916


[-9 votes] Solution #2: No reinventing the wheel.


[5 votes] Solution #3: Use giver


[6 votes] Solution #4: Use bindfs


]]> en-us Sat, 08 Mar 2008 21:20:32 +0000 Wed, 15 Jun 2011 12:39:05 +0000 QAPoll module http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/3916/
i did not encounter this problem yet. however i do not understand why the solution should not be simply a group 'music' and alice and bob are both members of this group?! could you post a thread where you discussed this topic with the linux gurus? ;)

Flo]]> Sat, 08 Mar 2008 22:01:36 +0000
Simply download/create folder "Nirvana" with some songs. The default permission is read+write for owner ("Bob"), read for group ("music"), read for others. Move it to shared folder. Alice can't delete Nirvana/song1.mp3.

You can modify your umask to have default write access for group for newly created files. However, all applications are not obliged to honor this and may create your files with different permissions (and many of them do).]]> Sat, 08 Mar 2008 22:39:40 +0000 Sat, 08 Mar 2008 23:00:36 +0000 It does sound like a seperate partition is one good way to address this problem. (The other being a daemon as suggested).

If the partition is mounted so that permissions are not applied then everybody can use it.

I am no expert, but checking the man page for mount suggests that standard Linux partitions do not offer this feature.

FAT since it is a very basic system without permissions allows this solution to be implemented.

Unfortunately FAT does not offer long file name support which is very bad news if you are trying to store your music!

FAT32 which does offer (crummy) long file name support is covered by Microsoft patents.

It looks like a new option to mount a standard EXT2/3 partition without permission checking is required.]]> Sun, 09 Mar 2008 00:30:50 +0000
Advanced users know how to add a group, put users in it, make a folder owned by that group, make it sticky so other users get access to first user's files, etc. YourMum does not.

YourMum wants to right click, see the option "Share this folder with everyone on this computer" and have it WORK. It's really sad that the easiest way of doing this right now is by using a fat32 or ntfs filesystem.
]]> Sun, 09 Mar 2008 00:48:05 +0000
In the default install, have a directory somewhere (/home/shared? /media/shared? /usr/share/shared?!) that is owned by nobody and rwxs for everybody. Make a simlink to it in every user's home directory as is done with Examples/

This would satisfy most people. They can add their own Music / Movies folders under Shared and they'll automagically be shared with everyone.
]]> Sun, 09 Mar 2008 01:02:16 +0000 Create a group called music and add the users. Go to the settings of each user and change the 'Main group' to music. Log out and in.

After this, all newly created files will have music as group.

Now you only have to bind the existing files to the group music, grand write permission to the files and execute permission to the directories.
# sudo chgrp -R music /home/music
# sudo chmod -R g+r+w+X /home/music
(use a capital X otherwise all files will get execute rights!!)

The only disadvantage is that all of these users can also poke in each others home directory.


]]> Sun, 09 Mar 2008 01:21:42 +0000
A symbolic link in each user's ~ directory would be great!]]> Sun, 09 Mar 2008 05:33:05 +0000
But really, that's just totally impractical for average user sharing. One more suitable possibility is to set up an interface for making samba shares of directories easy to create and mount by the other user.
]]> Sun, 09 Mar 2008 08:32:41 +0000
2) All of your suggested solutions I have tried and *they do not work*, believe me. There is always some flaw in it. When Bob creates folder with files in his home and moves it to shared folder, permissions won't change. Sticky bit doesn't help either. Same primary group with modified umask sounds good, but all programs doesn't honor this and there are some security concerns. There's always something. And I am not a linux newbie.

I wouldn't like to explain all the problems with different methods, because it can be really time and space consuming to show reasonable example. And this is not a technical support forum. I would like to point out that this problem exists and it's non-trivial even for experienced linux users, and so that Ubuntu developers should explore this and try to create some user-friendly solution.

So please, don't post another "solutions" (they won't work perfect anyway:), just vote for this issue and let Ubuntu developers know about it and do something about it! Thanks :)
]]> Sun, 09 Mar 2008 08:54:14 +0000
There's a link in the left column whiwh permits to acces (with or without a password) to the music of the others.

This plugins is in french "partage de musique DAAP".

It's really cool. I recomend it for sharing music ! Enjoy ! :-)]]> Sun, 09 Mar 2008 09:01:44 +0000 I wound up making a group and then making a script in rcS.d called S81_Share:
chown -R firstuser:thegroup "/Share"
chmod -R ug+rwx,o=rx "/Share"
Works but its not great. After one user adds files, the computer must be restarted before others can edit or rename them. And I think everything is set to executable but I don't let that bother me. Also this could be the reason my computer boots up slow but again I don't let that bother me.
]]> Sun, 09 Mar 2008 12:37:54 +0000
Here's a Plasmoid for easy sharing between people:
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php/Kepas+-+KDE+Easy+Publish+and+Share?content=73968

You need a program that works with Plasmoids for Gnome or just port it over to a native GTK app.]]> Sun, 09 Mar 2008 18:35:39 +0000 Sun, 09 Mar 2008 18:44:36 +0000 Sun, 09 Mar 2008 18:45:32 +0000 Sun, 09 Mar 2008 19:13:08 +0000 Sun, 09 Mar 2008 19:34:39 +0000 Sun, 09 Mar 2008 19:48:01 +0000
This is really a problem. ]]> Sun, 09 Mar 2008 20:25:47 +0000 Would like to see some common 'family' resources! Would be great!]]> Sun, 09 Mar 2008 20:27:08 +0000
Citing the acl(5) manpage:

OBJECT CREATION AND DEFAULT ACLs
The access ACL of a file object is initialized when the object is created with any of the creat(), mkdir(), mknod(), mkfifo(), or open() functions. If a default ACL is associated with a directory, the mode parameter to the functions creating file objects and the default ACL of the directory are used to determine the ACL of the new object:

1. The new object inherits the default ACL of the containing directory as its access ACL.

...

I have not tried, but I think it can be used to fix the problem.

I suggest that the root filesystem should be mounted with ACLs on by default (e.g. add acl to options in fstab). Nautilus should be extended to allow modifying ACLs and automatically ask for admin permissions if the user's permissons do not suffice for an operation. (like Vista and Mac OS X)
]]> Mon, 10 Mar 2008 09:30:19 +0000 Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:42:57 +0000 it could be an enough practical solution.]]> Mon, 17 Mar 2008 10:01:47 +0000
homedir should be private with a special "public" readable folder
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/5287/

]]> Fri, 21 Mar 2008 13:43:23 +0000 ]]> Fri, 21 Mar 2008 21:59:21 +0000 Fri, 21 Mar 2008 22:10:58 +0000
On top of this a special folder where all users can read and write is very nice but it's not the same.

]]> Sat, 22 Mar 2008 23:48:55 +0000
On top of this a special folder where all users can read and write is very nice but it's not the same.

my idea which is marked as a duplicate but shouldn't be marked as a duplicate IMHO :

homedir should be private with a special "public" readable folder
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/5287/ ]]> Sat, 22 Mar 2008 23:49:54 +0000 Fri, 28 Mar 2008 13:51:06 +0000 Sun, 30 Mar 2008 20:49:49 +0000
http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/partel/bindfs/

It uses FUSE and allows some extra access manipulation, e.g.

/usr/local/bin/bindfs -M @users -o nonempty /opt/share /opt/share

makes /opt/share fully accessible by all users from @users group (can be done automatically at boot)
]]> Fri, 04 Apr 2008 18:41:18 +0000 Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:59:05 +0000 Sun, 11 May 2008 18:07:07 +0000
When we switch users in Ubuntu 7.10 (not upgraded to 8.04 yet for other reasons), we have to unplug the drive and plug it back in (either the USB or the power cable to the drive). Otherwise, the new user does not even see the drive. This is awkward, and I always fear data loss from unsafe device removal. (Unmounting before switching users gives error messages sometimes). No such problems with the same drive in Windows XP though -- all users see it by default.

I suppose Linux security originated on servers, where you may not want users to share each-other's files or local USB drives. But the opposite is often true for a home desktop.

I've tried using groups and permissions via the Nautilus/GNOME GUI, but it does not seem to work.

The USB drive is Western Digital "My Book" 1 TB, which uses a VFAT32 file system. I would hate having to reformat to a Linux file system if this means having to back up and restore all the data.

Thanks for supporting an enhancement to Ubuntu in this area.]]> Thu, 22 May 2008 05:02:10 +0000 Sat, 31 May 2008 22:25:24 +0000
http://www.getdeb.net/search.php?keywords=lanshark]]> Thu, 03 Jul 2008 22:50:17 +0000
Symbolic links have been mentioned a few times so far, but what about those rarely-used, often-neglected hard links?

How about each users ~/Public is a hard-link to the first user's (ie. having UID 1000) ~/Public folder (therefore all ~/Public folders effectively being the same folder, as far as the filesystem is concerned)? This first user's ~/Public folder would have system-wide writable permissions (drwxrwxrwx), created when Ubuntu is first installed. Then whenever a new user gets created, a hard link is created to that first user's (or any other user's, should that first user not exist anymore) ~/Public folder.

With symlinks, a separate folder has to exist somewhere (which all the symlinks point to), and then you have the problem that nobody can agree on where that separate folder should be. Under /opt? /usr/local? /home? The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (http://www.pathname.com/fhs/) falls short of suggesting any such standard, proper place to put such a folder, despite it's obvious value.

But with hard links, this confusion goes away, as all /home/*/Public simply IS the same folder.

After all, all users home directories will live on the same partition, namely /home, so it's safe to use hard links (since you can always safely assume you'll be staying on the same partition, be it / or /home).

One advantage of this is that with hard links, Tracker (or any other program that might balk when it encounters a symlink) will have no qualms about indexing inside ~/Public, because it seems like a regular folder.]]> Sun, 24 Aug 2008 15:29:44 +0000 Sun, 07 Sep 2008 19:52:59 +0000
* Get and compile:

cd /tmp
wget http://bindfs.googlecode.com/files/bindfs-1.8.tar.gz
tar xzvf bindfs-1.8.tar.gz
cd bindfs-1.8
sudo apt-get install libfuse-dev build-essential
./configure
make
sudo make install

* Share my /home/common folder as /home/shared for uses alex, john and jack

sudo /bin/mkdir /home/shared
sudo /usr/local/bin/bindfs --mirror-only=alex,john,jack /home/common /home/shared

* Make this at reboot time so that it works over NFS (accessing from Windows/Ubuntu PC)

sudo gedit /etc/rc.local

and copy the 2 lines above in it

]]> Sun, 14 Sep 2008 15:57:16 +0000
i put loop file in /shared

dd if=/dev/zero of=pic.loop bs=1M count=2000
mkfs.vfat pic.loop

automatic mount to /shared/Pictures in fstab:
/shared/pic.loop /shared/Pictures vfat umask=000 0 0

then all user can share file to /shared/Pictures]]> Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:26:11 +0000
The problem is how can users allow others users change their files in this folder. It because the umask on Ubuntu system is 0022, so all files in that folder would be read-only for shareddoc group's members. It's a security risk change the umask so my suggestion is a daemon that watch changes in files inside this folder, using DBUS or other magic resource.

Everyone who I'd want to allow to access that folders I just include this guy in that group.

I know it is so easy to do, but I'd love if a wizard or similar could help me to do it. A Single button in folder property that I just click and would be able to include a new member in that group.

I'm sorry about my English. ]]> Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:53:40 +0000 Thu, 02 Oct 2008 21:25:30 +0000
1. Delete de windows networks icon
http://img90.imageshack.us/my.php?image=85330472bu1.png


2. In the new Network:// detected the protocols in host
http://img137.imageshack.us/my.php?image=95376211hx7.png

3 Show the host detectes in local network
http://img90.imageshack.us/my.php?image=83103217gu9.png


4 Clic in host 1 for more details os the procotols avaibles
http://img259.imageshack.us/my.php?image=46306862qe0.png


5. Clic in protocos nfs for share the folder in the local host
http://img259.imageshack.us/my.php?image=11026040at8.png



And the p2p protocol share files local

sorry idont speak english


P2P in nautilus network:// for local share folders easy

ejemple integrated lanshark

P2p file share integrated in nautilus network

remove the windows networks

and detected host in the network://

into the host clicked, one menu and more options: ssh, nfs, samba, p2p local filse share.

Sorry, idont speak english

Graphical explication


1 Delete the icon for Windows networks
http://img90.imageshack.us/my.php?image=85330472bu1.png


2 Erasing the icon, the window was clean, and just to show the machines on local network
http://img137.imageshack.us/my.php?image=95376211hx7.png

3 Show machines found on the Web
http://img90.imageshack.us/my.php?image=83103217gu9.png

4 Click on the machine to scan the network protocols
http://img259.imageshack.us/my.php?image=46306862qe0.png

5 we click on the protocol nfs to explore it and view files and folders
http://img259.imageshack.us/my.php?image=11026040at8.png ]]> Thu, 02 Oct 2008 21:25:57 +0000 Fri, 11 Sep 2009 10:25:02 +0000 https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/sharing-files
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/secure-home
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/local-file-share]]> Wed, 25 Nov 2009 19:33:33 +0000 ---
Solution #2: No reinventing the wheel.
Written by eduardoassis the 19 Mar 09 at 14:41. Report as spam / irrelevant
Just make NFS easier to use with a GUI integrated in Nautilus and Dolphin, with a easy way to choose who can or cannot access it.
---

Now that NFS is no longer a Sun Microsystems project and now an Oracle project, I suggest running away from NFS as a default file-sharing method in Ubuntu. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_File_System_(protocol)]]> Wed, 01 Sep 2010 06:40:26 +0000
I have a folder containing mp3 files I want to share without duplicating the mp3 content: home/me/sharedFolder

I moved the folder to my Public directory:
home/me/Public/sharedFolder

Next, I changed the permissions of the folder and its contents:
sudo chmod 777 /home/me/Public/sharedFolder

Then I created a symbolic link to the sharedFolder in the sharee's hierarchy, eg: /home/someoneElse/Music

Simply navigate to the intended location of the symbolic link in a terminal (eg: cd /home/someoneElse/Music) and create the symbolic link:
sudo ln -s /home/me/Public/sharedFolder

I can't remember if I had to chmod the individual files or if the change cascaded down. If it didn't, sudo chmod 777 [fullPathTo]/sharedFolder/*.mp3 (and another for the jpg) is all that's needed.

It all works now as intended: when the sharee clicks on the symbolic link, it is *as if* the folder and all its contents are a child of the sharee's Music directory, and there is no duplication of files. Well weapon.]]> Tue, 16 Nov 2010 13:47:17 +0000
It would be a very big change, but what if they started interpreting it as "inherit the parent dir umask"?
Of course, it would have to work for copying files too, not only for creating new ones.

Then `chmod 4777 Shared`
would be enough to make local sharing work,
and `chmod 4770 Shared && chown me:commongroup Shared`
would share it between users in the commongroup.]]> Wed, 15 Jun 2011 12:39:05 +0000