[PLUG] Reality collides with Linux worldview

Richard Owlett rowlett at cloud85.net
Tue Apr 11 16:02:37 UTC 2017


I've posted before (here and elsewhere) about an underlying problem - 
concept of users, groups, and permissions. I'm also considering the idea 
that at some level the underlying cause(ww?) is linguistic rather than 
technological (that will be for a USENET language forum).

Right now I have a discrete application problem requiring a solution 
using current technology.

The ENVIRONMENT is a laptop with multiple installs of Debian Jessie 
using MATE desktop whose purpose is experimentally determining an 
optimal configuration.

I wish to have a partition set up in such a manner that ALL users of 
*ANY* installed OS will have totally unfettered access.

My original solution was to use a fstab entry of:
UUID=E90C-65B4  /media/common vfat auto,exec,rw,flush,umask=000  0 0
(vfat specified as solution will also be used on a machine with WinXP)

The first problem problem was when copying a file *TO* that partition, 
the "allow execution flag" was automatically set.

A suggested solution was to use umask=111. That, for un-understood 
reasons, prevented deleting any file already there or copying new files 
to that partition.

I did notice one other aberration when using umask=000.
When copying a file whose owner was 'richard' of group 'richard' to that 
partition, the owner was *AUTOmagically* changed 'root' of group 'root'.

That suggest a form of solution which I have no idea of how to implement 
- or even if it could be implemented.

Can fstab cause the partition's owner to 'universal' of group 'universe'?
NOTE BENE: spelling of 'universal'/'universe' intentional.

The intention being that *all* users would *AUTOmagically* be members of 
group 'universe'. Would require attention to creating same gid 
automatically.

Comments/suggestions please.
TIA






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