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Thread: Home Server Advice

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Beans
    78

    Question Home Server Advice

    I am looking for some advice on my proposed home server setup.
    • Public - User, everyone that has network access (no password required)
      -Guest access
      -Downloaded/Archived TV and Music and Movies (read-only)
    • Family - Family documents, photos, and videos
      -Mom
      -Dad
      -Son
      -Daughter
    • Parents - Write access to family Group files plus additional separate “parental files location”
      -Mom
      -Dad
    • Kids - Parents also have full permissions
      -Son
      -Daughter



    The Public Group will be for guests over our house on the network. They should have read-only access to a public folder for information such as movies, tv shows, and documents for neighbors phone numbers, emergency contacts, …

    The Family Group will be for direct family only: parents and kids. Only the should have write access to the family folder so the kids don’t accidentally delete the family photos. Eventually when they get older, they should be able to create files and folders. However, they should never be able to delete a file or folder made by a Parent.

    The Parents Group will be for parents only. Only parents should have access to the parents folder. The kids should not be able to list or access this directories. By default, Mom or dad should have full access (read/write/execute) to new files and folders created in this folder.

    The Kids Group will be for our son and daughter. They should not have access to each others files but the parents should have full access to their files. Files to be shared with the Family should be placed in the Family folder.

    All of these folders should be exposed over the network via Samba shares. It would be nice to have the current windows username and password the same on the Linux server.



    Strategy

    • Users
      -Mom
      -Dad
      -Son
      -Daughter
    • Groups
      -Public
      -Family
      -Parents
      -Kids
    • Folders
      -/user/mom
      -/user/dad
      -/user/son
      -/user/daughter
      -/user/family?
      -/user/parents?
      -/user/public?



    Questions
    I understand the basics of user and group creation, but had a few questions:

    1. Where should “group” folders be placed? Since there is no “family/parents/public” user, where should this shared folder be created?
    2. How do I setup default access control/permissions for each “group folder” as described above? Each folder has different requirements for the default permissions when files are placed in the folder. In addition I would like these permissions to be applied to the samba shares AND local machine.
    3. Is there a way to implement the Windows 7 “libraries” feature where the group folders and user folders are presented as merged into a single directory structure? Is UnionFS the suggested way for Ubuntu 12.04? What package should I install for this?



    Thanks for any advice, I am looking forward to my new server setup.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Location
    Boston MetroWest
    Beans
    16,326

    Re: Home Server Advice

    Quote Originally Posted by brianafischer View Post
    Where should “group” folders be placed? Since there is no “family/parents/public” user, where should this shared folder be created?
    I'd create a "family" user, put everyone in the "family" group and set the permissions on /home/family to 770.

    How do I setup default access control/permissions for each “group folder” as described above? Each folder has different requirements for the default permissions when files are placed in the folder. In addition I would like these permissions to be applied to the samba shares AND local machine.
    You just need to set the right permissions at the operating system level. Suppose you also create /home/parents. Then mom and dad would need to be members of the "parents" group, and the permissions on /home/parents should be 770.

    You might find the "force group" and "create mask" directives to be helpful in the Samba configuration for this share:

    Code:
    [parents]
         path = /home/parents
         valid users = mom, dad
         force group = parents
         create mask = 0770
         [other stuff]
    Files mom puts there will be owned by mom with group parents and will have full permissions for both her and other members of the parents group. You should probably disable the default [homes] share in smb.conf and set up the exports yourself.

    Is there a way to implement the Windows 7 “libraries” feature where the group folders and user folders are presented as merged into a single directory structure?
    Can't help with that one, I'm afraid.
    Last edited by SeijiSensei; November 20th, 2012 at 04:15 PM.
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  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jul 2010
    Location
    Michigan, USA
    Beans
    2,136
    Distro
    Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver

    Re: Home Server Advice

    Quote Originally Posted by brianafischer View Post
    Is there a way to implement the Windows 7 “libraries” feature where the group folders and user folders are presented as merged into a single directory structure? Is UnionFS the suggested way for Ubuntu 12.04? What package should I install for this?
    You could pool the storage with either mhddfs or AUFS.

    mhddfs is very neat, but runs as a FUSE module, so it's not very fast. AUFS runs in kernel space, so it's very fast and is lighter on resources, but is not as feature rich as mhddfs. A Typical AUFS mountpoint would look like this (/etc/fstab).

    Code:
    none /storage aufs br:/media/disk1=rw:/media/disk2=rw:/media/disk3=rw:/media/disk4=rw,sum,create=pmfs 0 0
    You need to have filesystems on each disk you want to pool, and have each of those disks already mounted.

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