Is it possible to share multimedia between users on the same computer?

**idonald** · July 25th, 2012

Hi,

I have installed ubuntu 12.04 on my new laptop and I have a lot of family photos, music and videos that will be saved on the hard disk. I will be creating 3 user accounts on this system, one for me, another for my wife and a third for my daughter.

I wanted to have the media shared so that any user account can access and modify the contents(mainly by adding new items)which would be visible by all user accounts.

Is there an easy way of doing this?

**HermanAB** · July 25th, 2012

Yes.

Make a directory somewhere, e.g. sudo mkdir /home/fampics
Make a group for everybody, e.g. sudo groupadd family
Make everybody members of that group, e.g. sudo usermod -G family joesoap
Set the directory group, e.g. sudo chown root:family /home/fampics
Make the directory SGID, e.g. sudo chmod g+s /home/fampics

Now files uploaded to /home/fampics should be usable by all members of group family.

**idonald** · July 25th, 2012

Hi Herman,

Thanks for this. Would I need to make some sort of shortcut in my own home directly to that folder or will it already be visible by going into my own home folder?

Kind Regards

**idonald** · July 26th, 2012

Could anyone advise on the above please?

**steeldriver** · July 26th, 2012

It would be visible by going UP one directory from your home folder, i.e. from

Code:

/home/yourname

to

Code:

/home

If that's not enough, you could create a symbolic link (shortcut) from your home folder,

Code:

mkdir ~/fampics
ln -s ~/fampics /home/fampics

**idonald** · July 26th, 2012

Thanks Steeldriver I really appreciate the assist.

Out of curiosity, are there any alternative/better ways of achieving this? I'm not saying the above suggestion is bad or unhelpful(the complete opposite in-fact), I would just like to look at several options if possible so I can choose the one that makes most sense to me.

The more I learn the better I guess.

Many Thanks