Give user access to folder without changing ownership?

I have a script that works with /etc/NetworkManager:

drwxr-xr-x   6 root root    4096 Apr  3  2017 NetworkManager/

I want to give the user programX write permission for this folder without changing the ownership.

Is that possible or would I have to change the ownership?

Answers:

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Method 1

This is what access control lists are for.

setfacl -m 'u:programX:rwx' /etc/NetworkManager

The user account programX now has read, write, and traverse access to the directory, but does not have ownership access.

Bonus way of doing this on FreeBSD with its NFS ACLs:

setfacl -m 'u:programX:rwxD::allow' /etc/NetworkManager

Further reading

• Operation not supported with setfacl?

Method 2

You can use ACLs for this, first of make sure that the acl package is installed.

After that you can run

setfacl -m u:programX:rw NetworkManager/

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0