GRASS 4.0 and directory location/protection

[Hal Mueller]

We're running Sun 3s and 4s here--our solution might pertain to other
systems as well.  What we do here is to have the sticky bit set for
both the database directory and the location directory, and leave them
both group/others writable and readable.  In other words,

% chmod 1777 /home/grass/data               # the database
% chmod 1777 /home/grass/data/spearfish     # the location

Individual mapsets within a location, however, are left writable only
by the owner:

% chmod -R 755 /home/grass/data/spearfish/PERMANENT  # main mapset
% chmod -R 755 /home/grass/data/spearfish/hmueller   # a user's own mapset

This means that anyone can create a new location in the Grass
database, and have it protected from other users; anyone can
create a mapset within a location, and have it protected from other
users; and anyone can read (but not write) other users' files within
Grass.

Of course, if you want to deny access, then do
% chmod -R 700 /home/grass/data/spearfish
or
% chmod -R 700 /home/grass/data/spearfish/hmueller

See the manual page for chmod (in both section 1 and section 2) for
details.

Hal Mueller			"Senator, you're no Paul Tsongas."
hmueller at orca.tamu.edu