NAS user rights

[ajohn]

As far as I can see the only thing N4F lacks compared with many commercial NAS's is an easy method of setting up user rights on the nas.

There are some excellent links to instructions for setting these up but only as that particular person wants leaving users having to spend hours and hours searching for information on what the various rights flags do and probably not understanding the language used. The latter aspect can make doing anything difficult even being aware of what can be done.

I feel that a couple of web gui pages can overcome many of the problems. One establishes groups and users and who's in what. Most people grasp that concept easily.

The 2nd page needs to create directory structures and who can access what and it what way eg a group or a particular user etc but something else is needed to cope with inherited rights. The idea of a fake root to their directory structure can be useful for this - ie They are unaware of any other directories above their position in the directory tree and if they were have no rights there anyway. They may have rights to some other place in the directory tree as well and of course all of these need to be mounted to them in one go.

At a simple level for say home use all that is really needed is say a series of exclusive user directories and a series of directories open to all or some of the users. All on a single level in the directory tree. Bit like home on a Linux system but the preceding directories if they are there are not even viewable or accessible other than by admin of course although some systems can lock admin out of any director or part of the structure as well for obvious reasons. Eg Top level company confidential information that only the few at the top can have access to.

On language aspects mentioned earlier and understanding it I have run a couple of servers in the past who's systems aren't used much any more so I am aware of what facilities should be available but have no idea how to do it. It would take many days and days to find out how to do a full blown set up like this and it would probably have to be done with an editor and the console - in my view things like this should be easy to do in a gui these days. If OS doesn't do it others will and have probably done it already.

John
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