Determining Permissions

[zeneknath]

Hello Friends !

At our workplace, some are using Ubuntu ! our computers are being operated by many users.
I know the root password and would want to deny/block the other users from accessing the File System, Computer-Windows Drives (Hard Disk C:,D:,E: etc..) and home folder -Downloads, music, documents etc..
If i right click on drives Properties-Permissions it says (The Permissions could not be determined).

How to block/Not Permit the other users from accessing the files/folders from Windows Drives and Ubuntu Folders

is there any password protected folder guard kind a application for Ubuntu ?

Thanks !

[buteman]

Windows does not have the same permissions system as Linux so that is why it says 'permissions could not be determined'.

I would suggest you could create a group which would have permission to see the windows drives and then only have yourself as a member of the group. Then set the permissions on each drive so only the owner and group can access them.

[deneb101]

How to block/Not Permit the other users from accessing the files/folders from Windows Drives and Ubuntu Folders

It is not possible to set group permission on windows partitions because they are set once for all at mount time.

[ramin.honary]

Modern windows filesystems (using NTFS) is limited to read-only in Linux. Older systems like VFAT do not have permissions built-in to the filesystem like Linux does.

If you want to restrict access, you simply need to get rid of the Windows filesystem. Copy all files to a Linux filesystem (ext4) -- or better yet, backup your files and re-format the drive as ext4, then copy the files back to it, then set your Windows users to connect to the Linux filesystem via Samba. Samba will enforce permissions that are set in Linux.

[buteman]

Modern windows filesystems (using NTFS) is limited to read-only in Linux.

Sorry but this is no longer true and has not been for well over a year!

[ramin.honary]

Sorry but this is no longer true and has not been for well over a year!

Linux NTFS support is just not that reliable or stable. Read-only NTFS access is highly recommended.

All NTFS support I have ever seen for Linux is fairly limited. The user-space filesystem driver does not allow setting permissions, and the Kernel-level filesystem driver does not allow you to create new files, only overwrite or rename existing files.

There are other commercial NTFS user-space drivers, but I don't think they are open source. I think the real problem is dealing with patents/licensing issues, that's why its been so difficult to get a working Linux NTFS driver. No one wants to stick their neck out.

[kevv]

I mostly use Knoppix 5.1
and I often use it to create both files and folders on my Windows XP NTFS partition.

The only problem that I encounter is:
that NTFS does not allow the use of as many characters in filenames as Linux.
So copying files from ext2 to NTFS sometimes throws up an error message.

[ProfTheory]

:ramin.honary: Linux NTFS support is just not that reliable or stable. Read-only NTFS access is highly recommended.

I find it quite stable in Fedora 14. True you can't set NTFS permissions, yet.

I think the real problem is dealing with patents/licensing issues

That was the reason why early on in the Fedora Project Red Hat did not include the ntfs-3g drivers.

[juaco]

@ramin.honary

like others have said, the situation where r/w access to ntfs was not reliable is no longer since about three or four years when ntfs-3g became mainstream. I've been using it heavily on a Tb filesystem with zero problems.

What is true though, is that ntfs-3g performance leaves to be desired, and that it can't map between the two permission schemes. Samba does a better job at that mapping but is a network FS

[ramin.honary]

@kevv, @ProfTheory, @juaco

I mostly use Knoppix 5.1
and I often use it to create both files and folders on my Windows XP NTFS partition.

like others have said, the situation where r/w access to ntfs was not reliable is no longer since about three or four years when ntfs-3g became mainstream. I've been using it heavily on a Tb filesystem with zero problems.

What is true though, is that ntfs-3g performance leaves to be desired, and that it can't map between the two permission schemes. Samba does a better job at that mapping but is a network FS

I see, well I guess I am a bit out-of-date when it comes to Windows integration. Thanks for the info you guys!