Want to share folders with another user in Ubuntu 14.04

Question

I am using Ubuntu 14.04 and I have created another user in my system so that I could do my work easily and others dont poke me. But my problem is, I want to share a particular folder (Downloads folder) with another user so that he/she can also see all files and access them (Its OK if another user doesnt have permission to delete these files)...

I searched earlier and some guys are advising to make another user admin. But making admin isn't solving this problem as another user is not able to see anything in that particular folder even after being admin.. Please help..

And I don't want any solution in which another user has to type anything in terminal everytime.. Thannks

Answer 1

You can do this by adding the secondary user to a specific group, and then modifying the permissions of the shared folder. Here is how I would do it:

Add new group sharedfolders to your Group list:

    sudo addgroup sharedfolders

Then, add the secondary user to this group

   sudo usermod -a -G sharedfolders secondusername

Just replace "secondusername" with, well, your second username.

Lastly, on your main user that owns the folder you want to share. Right click the folder in your file browser, go to the permissions tab and under "group" select the correct permissions for the "sharedfolders" group. When on your secondary user account, you can browse to that folder and make a bookmark or link to it however you prefer to do that for easier access.

Answer 2

Create a group, add the users to it. Create a folder. Grant access to the group, with whatever permissions you like. Add a link to the folder (with the same name, probably) to each user's home directory.

This is very flexible, but I'll do a walkthrough, for users Adam & Bella:

cd ~ ; mkdir share addgroup workers ; adduser Adam workers ; adduser Bella workers chown :workers share ; chmod g+rx share ; chmod g-w share ;

The links will want adding by the users, or use su (assuming you know their passwords)

su Adam cd ~ ; ln /home/Deepak/share share -s ; exit`

& repeat for Bella.