Allow a regular user the ability to read all (otherwise protected) directories

Question

I have a system set up with the following users/groups:

user 1 & user 2 are members of group 1.

user 3 & user 4 are members of group 2.

user 5 & user 6 are members of group 3.

user 1 is also a member of an "administrator" group.

Each group has its own directory, with only the group having rwx permissions on that directory. Further, each user has their own, private directory within the group directory.

User 1 has rwx permissions for /Group1/User1/ directory, and no one else has. User1 also shares rwx permissions for the /Group1/ directory with User 2.

So far That's all set up, but my issue is that I need to allow User 1, through that fourth "administrator" group, access to all the other directories on the system.

I'm stuck on this because User 1 can't have sudo powers, they can only access the other users files.

Any help will be really appreciates, thanks.

Answer 1

If your Linux Distribution and used filesystem supports ACLs then this would be easily accomplished with setfacl:

setfacl -R -m d:g:administrator:rwx /Group2

-> this recursively sets the default permissions ("d:") for group ("g:") "administrator" to "rwx"

-> since it's a default permission all new created directories and files within /Group2 will inherit the permissions for group "administrator".

You can view the ACL permissions with getfacl:

getfacl /Group2

Hope that helps.