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Maintaining system security

The owner and group attributes

Each file on the system has an owner. Generally, the creator of the file is also the owner. However, a file owner can generally reassign ownership rights using the chown(C) command.

If you own a file, you can decide who has the right to read it, write to it, or, if it is a program, to execute it. You can also restrict permissions for directories. When you grant execute permission for a directory, you allow the specified users to change directory to it and list its contents with the ls(C) command. Only the owner or a privileged user can define the following:

Because this type of access control is mediated at the discretion of the owner of the file, it is called Discretionary Access Control (DAC).

Each file is also assigned to a particular group. A group is a collection of users. Each user may be assigned to one or more groups. The users in a file's group may have special DAC permissions set.


Next topic: Discretionary access control (DAC): permission bits
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SCO OpenServer Release 6.0.0 -- 03 June 2005