Working with Access Control Lists
On the List
© IKO, Fotolia
The ancient Linux permission system is often insufficient for complex production environments. Access Control Lists offer a flexible alternative.
Alice appreciates the convenience of a PC-based electronic calendar, but to maintain her privacy, she has set strict permissions for her calendar file: She can add new appointments herself, but other members of her workgroup have read-only access. Others outside of her workgroup are not even allowed to look.
This configuration is fine at first, but one day Bob from another department agrees to collaborate with Alice. To allow this to happen, she has to give him access to her calendar data.
In this scenario, it is clear that the legacy Linux permission system has outlived its usefulness. To allow Bob to read the file with her calendar data, Alice can ask the administrator to move the new colleague into her own group, but this would allow Bob to view all the other documents produced by Alice's team. Another approach would be to temporarily set up a completely new user group with both Alice's and Bob's accounts as members. In this simple scenario, a temporary group might be an acceptable solution, but in a real-world enterprise environment, group management becomes far more complicated, and the habit of creating temporary groups on the fly can lead to too many groups with no good way of tracking them.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Gnome Developers Consider Dropping RPM Support
In a move that might shock a lot of users, the Gnome development team has proposed the idea of going straight up Flatpak.
-
openSUSE Tumbleweed Ditches AppArmor for SELinux
If you're an openSUSE Tumbleweed user, you can expect a major change to the distribution.
-
Plasma 6.3 Now Available
Plasma desktop v6.3 has a couple of pretty nifty tricks up its sleeve.
-
LibreOffice 25.2 Has Arrived
If you've been hoping for a release that offers more UI customizations, you're in for a treat.
-
TuxCare Has a Big AlmaLinux 9 Announcement in Store
TuxCare announced it has successfully completed a Security Technical Implementation Guide for AlmaLinux OS 9.
-
First Release Candidate for Linux Kernel 6.14 Now Available
Linus Torvalds has officially released the first release candidate for kernel 6.14 and it includes over 500,000 lines of modified code, making for a small release.
-
System76 Refreshes Meerkat Mini PC
If you're looking for a small form factor PC powered by Linux, System76 has exactly what you need in the Meerkat mini PC.
-
Gnome 48 Alpha Ready for Testing
The latest Gnome desktop alpha is now available with plenty of new features and improvements.
-
Wine 10 Includes Plenty to Excite Users
With its latest release, Wine has the usual crop of bug fixes and improvements, along with some exciting new features.
-
Linux Kernel 6.13 Offers Improvements for AMD/Apple Users
The latest Linux kernel is now available, and it includes plenty of improvements, especially for those who use AMD or Apple-based systems.