Restricting users to their own home directories / not letting users view other users files...?

[Jonathan McKeown]

On Thursday 12 February 2009 03:07:42 Paul Schmehl wrote:
>
> Sorry if I wasn't clear.
>
> I wasn't suggesting that the *users* chgrp the files.  Keith would do that
> as root.  Then he sets the setgid bit to www (or whatever the web user is),
> and from that point going forward any files created by the user would be
> user:www instead of user:user.  Set the umask to 027, and world has no
> readability.
>
> This is exactly how I used to handle some files on a webserver that I
> maintain that other people needed to be able to edit, add and delete files
> from.  Once the sgid bit is set, the group membership of the files remains
> www no matter what user creates/touches a file.

Erm, isn't this only true for Linux and other SysV-type systems?

Unless I'm remembering wrong, in FreeBSD files are always created with group 
ownership the same as the directory they're created in - so all you need to 
do is change the group ownership of the directory (which has to be done by 
root).

Jonathan