Linux® For Dummies®, 8th Edition

Step 1: Plan a Sharing Policy

Before you can start sharing, first you must decide what you want to share and who gets to share it. Mapping out a folder sharing policy is a crucial element to creating a file server.

Even in small organizations, you must often restrict subgroups from accessing certain information. Whether it’s separating teacher data from students, or keeping children away from parents’ data, you often find yourself creating more than one group for sharing folders.

You can create as many shares on the file server as you need to manage the data groups. For each group that must share data, you must create a separate folder and define a separate group to place users in.

With all this information to keep straight, it’s usually best to create a simple table, mapping out what users should have access to what data. After you visually see the layout, it is easier to create the proper configuration. Table 21-1 demonstrates a simple shared folder policy table.

Table 21-1. Mapping Out a Shared Folder Policy

Group	Folder	Share Name	Members
accounting	/accounting	accounting	fred, barney
sales	/sales	sales	wilma, betty

Table 21-1 shows that each group is assigned a unique folder on the Linux system. To keep things simple, this example uses the same group, folder, and share names, but on a real system, this may not be possible. Making a table that maps out what’s what can save you from lots of headaches later on in the project.