Ownership of Shared Files

The files in the shared file area on monviso show up with very odd file owner names. This is because unix depends on numbers from the /etc/passwd file to identify owners. User numbers are not consistent across machines.

Being a file's owner on cumiana does not mean you are also the owner on monviso.

The same phenomenon applies to moving files to the shared area from the PC. They show up under account tredenti on monviso, but that user number means different people on other machines.

The points to remember are:

• Ownership of files in the shared area is chaotic. It depends from which machine you are viewing the file.
• You must liberally set protections on a shared file to world-read and and world-write, so you can see and modify your own file from different machines.
• There is no privacy in the shared area, except as afforded by basic politeness.

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