Using Octal Permissions to Set up a Collaboration Area

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Using Octal Permissions to Set up a Collaboration Area

In a multi-user environment like Linux, there will come a need to have a specific area set aside for different uses to collaborate. This lab will walk through the process and make sure you understand how different permissions can work together.

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Lab Info

Level

Beginner

Last updated

Apr 06, 2025

Duration

30m

Challenge

Ensure /opt/collab Can Be Accessed by the Other Managers but Not Will

The first thing we need to do is make sure Bob, Adam, and Sally are all members of the same group. This will allow us to use octal permissions on the group section to allow access.

If we run id bob, id adam, and id sally, we'll see that they're all members of the managers group.

So we can run chown bob.managers /opt/collab and chmod 770 /opt/collab to lock the directory down to Bob and the managers group.
Challenge

Ensure Files Written Can Be Read by All Users

As bob, adam, and sally, touch a file in /opt/collab and then try and cat all of those files as those 3 users.

Adam failed. Let's look at why.

The permissions on adam's file are 600, so his user can access the file but the other managers can't. If we check adam's .bash_profile we see his umask is set incorrectly for this task. Edit his .bash_profile and set his umask to 026 and try this again.

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