Share with Cluster Users
Home Directories
Do not give your home directory group write permissions. This will break your ability to log into the cluster. If you need to share files currently located in your home directory, either move it your project directory or contact us for assistance finding an appropriate location.
project and scratch60 links in Home Directories
For convenience, we create a symlink, or shortcut, in every home directory called project and palmer_scratch (and ~/scratch60on Milgram) that go to your respective storage spaces. However, if another user attempts to access any data via your symlink, they will receive errors related to permissions for your home space.
You can run mydirectories or readlink - f dirname (replace dirname with the one you are interested in) to get the "true" paths, which is more readily accesible to other users.
Share Data within your Group
By default, all project, purchased allocation and scratch directories are readable by other members of your group. As long as they use the true path (not the shortcut inside your home directory, see above), no permission changes should be needed. To see your group's current permission settings within project storage, see the example below:
# Replace 'netid' with your NetID and 'group' with your group name
cd /gpfs/gibbs/project/group/
ls -l
# Sample output
drwxr-x--- 0 netid group 4096 MM DD YYYY netid
drwxr-x--- 0 netid group 4096 MM DD YYYY netid
drwxr-x--- 0 netid group 4096 MM DD YYYY netid
Owner permissions(rwx) are defined as read, write and execute permissions. These permissions are divided into three parts, each containing their own 'rwx' permissions, and defined as Owner, Group, and Other User permissions. Users can add group write permissions to an existing file or directory using the chmod g+w command.
If you would like to ensure all new files and directories you create have group write permission, add the following line to your ~/.bashrc files:
umask 002
Shared Group Directories
Upon request we can setup directories for sharing scripts or data across your research group. These directories can either have read-only permissions for the group (so no one accidentally modifies something) or read and write permissions for all group members. If interested, contact us to request such a directory.
Share With Specific Users or Other Groups
It can be very useful to create shared directories that can be read and written by multiple users, or all members of a group. The linux command setfacl is useful for this, but can be complicated to use. We recommend that you create a shared directory somewhere in your project or scratch directories, rather than home. When sharing a sub-directory in your project or scratch, you need first share your project or scratch, and then share the sub-directory. Here are some simple scenarios.
Share a Directory with All Members of a Group
To share a new directory called shared in your project directory with group othergroup:
setfacl -m g:othergroup:rx $(readlink -f ~/project)
cd ~/project
mkdir shared
setfacl -m g:othergroup:rwX shared
setfacl -d -m g:othergroup:rwX shared
Share a Directory with a Particular Person
To share a new directory called shared with a person with netid aa111:
setfacl -m u:aa111:rx $(readlink -f ~/project)
cd ~/project
mkdir shared
setfacl -m u:aa111:rwX shared
setfacl -d -m u:aa111:rwX shared
If the shared directory already exists and contains files and directories, you should run the setfacl commands recursively, using -R:
setfacl -R -m u:aa111:rwX shared
setfacl -R -d -m u:aa111:rwX shared
Note that only the owner of a file or directory can run setfacl on it.
Remove Sharing of a Directory
To remove a group othergroup from sharing of a directory called shared:
setfacl -R -x g:othergroup shared
To remove a person with netid aa111 from sharing of a directory called shared:
setfacl -R -x u:aa111 shared