Linux groups allow better control access to files and folders. Here are the five commands you’ll want to keep in your back pocket.
Linux is a powerful operating system that also happens to be the most secure platform on the market. With plenty of security features and sub-systems, anyone using the open-source OS can add even more security and privacy, thanks to groups.
Groups make it possible to control what files and folders users have access to with much more efficiency than handling the task one user at a time.
Here’s an example to illustrate what I’m talking about. Let’s say you have 100 users who need to have access to a directory you created called /data. You could change the permissions for that folder to give anyone permission to access it, but that’s a security risk. Instead, you might create a group called data_users, change the ownership of the folder to data_users, and then add the necessary users to the new group. The beauty of this method is that any time a user no longer needs access to the folder, all you have to do is remove them from the group.
Before you get into such tasks, you’ll want to know how to manage groups on your Linux system and there are five commands you should learn.
