Crazy question about read/write privileges..

djbeta · #1 October 19th, 2004, 03:08 PM

I have a folder that is shared by about 10 employees in my company.

I would LOVE it if there was a way so that they could

1. be able to create folders and upload files

2. not be able to rename or delete those files that they have already uploaded

A Dropbox is not an option because I need them to be able to access the files after they upload them.

Is this possible ???? it would help me out soo much if I could get something like this set up.

thanks in advance..

gdekadt · #2 October 19th, 2004, 05:05 PM

Permissions that allow a user to write to a directory allow them to add, rename and delete.

You could look at setting up a cron task that would recursively change the ownership/permission on everything within that folder. As far as I know the minimum period for cron is one minute... the code would be a simple one liner like "sudo chmod -r -w /path\ to\ the\ folder/That_is_Shared/*". But don't quote me on that...

I've heard CroniX is good to simplify crontab changes.

Gabs

Cat · #3 October 19th, 2004, 05:06 PM

You could set the permissione of the folder that they need to access to Read/Write, but set the individual files in the folder to Read Only. You could probably set this up with an AppleScript and a FolderAction, so that the permissions are automatically converted. People would all be able to upload and download the files they need, but would be prevented from deleting/changing things. You'd have to check exactly which groups the employees all belong to and what privileges they have, but I think this should work more or less.

ElDiabloConCaca · #4 October 19th, 2004, 05:46 PM

In short, simply setting a certain priviledge to a folder will not accomplish what you want. You'll need a script or combination of scripts to accomplish what you want.

Being able to create a folder, then immediately not being able to rename the folder goes agains user priviledges and the UNIX multi-user style of doing things.

djbeta · #5 October 19th, 2004, 09:56 PM

I think I understand... so far I think my best option is to configure folder actions on the folder in question to run some Applescript when a file/folder is added.
I'm very curious to find out if such a script is possible/difficult to write.

The reason I want to do this is because my users are uploading files to a shared folder and then uploading them to a filemaker database system that will rely on the paths to the files not changing.. If the path changes or a folder is renamed, the system's access to the file will be broken.

Thanks for the responses.. if anyone has any other suggestions, please share!

scruffy · #6 October 20th, 2004, 12:29 AM

You can do it - set the 'sticky' permission bit on the directory. This allows users to create files in a directory, but only delete or rename those files that belong to them.

See the man pages for sticky and chmod for details.

ElDiabloConCaca · #7 October 20th, 2004, 10:38 AM

Hmm... but wouldn't that be like normal permissions? Every user has the ability to rename files and folders that belong to them, and if they copy the files and folders to a share, then unless that share has a "change permissions" script running on it, they would own those copied files and folders, thus be able to rename and delete them... no?

Natobasso · #8 October 20th, 2004, 03:15 PM

As long as the folder is set to Read Only you should be able to copy files but not rename or delete files. We have a problem with permissions on our server here at my contract job right now!

A great tool to get is "Tinker Tool". If you have Mac OS X 10.3 or 10.1 (doesn't do permissions in 10.2 for some reason) you can set your permissions very specifically for your computer with relation to the server.