Creating a shared directory

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Devuan forum / Documentation / @ (2026-06-24 10:33:52)

Creating a shared directory / From the tty shell

Common mistakes

If you login as root from another user using su remember to do $ su --login in order to have /usr/sbin in you path otherwise some command will be accessible only giving their full path. (ref:@), (fhs@)

Conventions used.

A command executed from root is prefixed with the (#) prompt symbol.

A command executed from a user is prefixed with the ($) prompt symbol.

Overview of the workflow

Searching for related commands.
Create a folder # mkdir /home/sharedfolder
Create a group (family)
Change shared's folder group owner
Add your users in that group
Do some testing to see if the default permissions suits you.

1. Searching for related commands

$ apropos -s 1,7,8  groups
$ apropos -s 1,7,8  user
$ apropos -s 1,7,8  permissions

Commands used

su (.deb util-linux)
addgroup (.deb adduser @ )
chown (.deb coreutils @)
usermod,groupmod (.deb passwd @)

As wee can see from apropos there are in our system available two commands related to group addition : groupadd and addgroup.(and two commands for user addition useradd,adduser although that doesnt interests us here). Which one should we use?

The man pages help us clarify any confusion. useradd,groupadd are lowlevel distribution agnostic commands part of the passwd deb pkg.

On the other adduser deb package offers : adduser,addgroup which ,according to man pages, are Debian specific frontends to the more distribution agnostic useradd, groupadd and usermod .( that why adduser package depends on passwd package). Adduser's commands are conformant to Debian policies regarding UIDs,GUIDs given (@).

So we'll use the addgroup command since Devuan is a Debian derivative .

2. Create a folder

First you must either 'become' root (using $ su --login) and then create the sharedfolder or ask your system's sysadm with root account to create the sharedfolder.

 # mkdir /home/sharedfolder

3. Create a group (family)

# man addgroup
   Add a group
      If  adduser is called with the --group option and without the --system option, 
      or addgroup is called respectively, a user group will be added.

# /usr/sbin/addgroup family

4. Change shared's folder group owner

# cd /home/
# chown root:family sharedFolder

5. Add your users in that group

Check # man usermod

# /usr/sbin/usermod -a -G family Alec
# /usr/sbin/usermod -a -G family Helen

6. Validation & testing

Helen@familypc:~                 $ cd /home/sharedFolder/
Helen@familypc:/home/sharedFolder$ ls
Helen@familypc:/home/sharedFolder$ touch test
Helen@familypc:/home/sharedFolder$ ls -al

Creating a shared directory

Related workflows

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