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Xmodulo posted a tutorial about configuring Access Control Lists (ACLs) on Linux



Working with permissions on Linux is rather a simple task. You can define permissions for users, groups or others. This works really well when you work on a desktop PC or a virtual Linux instance which typically doesn't have a lot of users, or when users don't share files among themselves. However, what if you are a big organization where you operate NFS or Samba servers for diverse users. Then you will need to be neat picky and set up more complex configurations and permissions to meet the requirements of your organization.

Linux (and other Unixes, that are POSIX compliant) has so-called Access Control Lists (ACLs), which are a way to assign permissions beyond the common paradigm. For example, by default you apply three permission groups: owner, group, and others. With ACLs, you can add permissions for other users or groups that are not simple "others" or any other group that the owner is not part of it. You can allow particular users A, B and C to have write permissions without letting their whole group to have writing permission.

ACLs are available for a variety of Linux filesystems including ext2, ext3, ext4, XFS, Btfrs, etc. If you are not sure if the filesystem you are using supports ACLs, just read the documentation.
  How to configure Access Control Lists (ACLs) on Linux