If user and group management has you in a quandary, it's time to take the advanced filesystem security class at the ACLU.

In our “Advanced Console Tricks” series we have already covered subjects like Getting help and Processes management. Now it’s time to understand how the file permissions work. In this article we’re going to cover topics such as the basics of Linux file access rights, useful commands that allow you to manage file permissions, as well as numerical and special access modes.

Yesterday I wrote about PCMan File Manager, which among other things offers better control over file permissions. Commenter Gavintlgold pointed out that’s it’s possible to get a similar dialog in Nautilus by changing a hidden setting in GNOME.

Files and directories in Linux file systems all have read, write and execute permissions associated with user, group, and others. However, there are also other attributes that can be attached to files and directories that are specific to certain file system types.

Going all control-freak on a Samba share and trying to finely slice-and-dice file permissions is the path to madness. Charlie Schluting has some sensible ideas on managing file permissions on your fileserver.

In Windows they are used for a long time already, but most Linux-users probably don't even know that their system supports them too. Access Control Lists (ACLs) extend the regular permissions we all know with the possibility to give permissions for specific users/groups.

User management on Fedora 15 is just as easy as on any other distribution or operating system. And the graphical user management tools (there are two) are very intuitive to use. There are two types of user accounts on Fedora 15 – Standard and Administrator. The Administrator has root or super user privileges. During installation, the user created may be added to the Administrators group.

If you read my article "Get to know Linux: File permissions" you know that it's possible, out of the box, to control who can access a file and what they can do with it. This helps to make Linux a fairly secure system. But did you know you can take even further control of that system with the help of Access Control Lists?

Recently on Tombuntu there's a post which tells you how to Enable the Advanced File Permissions Dialog in Nautilus by issuing the command in a terminal. If you feel more comfortable to achieve the goal through a GUI way. Here you go: