Why don't you simply setup a second group (they can be in group user and group "classXXXX") and then have them do it thus: The student's name is "studentid" Their default group is group "user" Your account name is "teacher" The second group (in which you also belong) is "classXXXX" They create the file "file" You are a member of classXXXX as well, and have created a directory named classXXXX with group classXXXX and permissions 770. Your root also needs to be at least 755. Then have them do this: chown studentid:classXXXX file chmod 440 file cp file ~teacher/classXXXX/file.studentid Added nice benefit: if you put a seed file in there of "file", with permissions 700, if they don't get it (nearly) right, it doesn't allow the student to copy in their work... added incentive on getting it right. Try something like that. Bill Ward -----Original Message----- From: Stan Isaacs [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, March 30, 2000 4:59 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: recipient.list.not.shown; @nswcphdn.navy.mil Subject: chown After looking at both the redhat archives, and freebsd, I guess I'm convinced that chown won't work, by default, for non-root users. Is there any way to change that default on Redhat Linux 6.1? In my unix class, I have the students give me their scripts, by copying them into my directory, and then I ask them to chown the files to me, for practice, and so I don't have to run as root. Not a big problem, but if I can allow chmod, I'd like to. Besides, I'd like them to get in the habit of understanding chown, for future systems they might work on, so they need (non-root) practice. Shouldn't the man pages for chown talk about this? Again, how can I keep telling my students to read the man pages, if they don't even give facts like who can execute a command? In fact, why isn't the command in /usr/sbin (or /sbin?), with the other system commands? If it won't work for regular users, it shouldn't be accessible to them (and the man page should say so!) -- Stan Isaacs -- To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe" as the Subject. -- To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe" as the Subject.
