permissions for /home

[RedBack]

The /home directory is currenly owned by a user. This users is no longer with the company. Who should be the owner of /home, what group should it be a part of and what should its permissions be?

Thanx.

[Robert-Jan Goossens · Accepted solution]

Hi Mark

ux001:/# ls -lad /home
drwxr-xr-x 17 root root 1024 Apr 4 16:55 /home

Robert-Jan.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

There is no "correct" answer here; however, yours is certainly wrong. I would tend to go with /home owned by root:root or root:bin. I would tend to set the permissions at 755 so that only root is allowed to create additional directories.

The various directories under /home should, of course, be owned by the individual user with group set to his primary group.

[Shannon Petry]

Since root can create directories without a write bit on owner, I'd recommend you go

root:root and 555 for the Mode.

Users should own their own home dir only, looks like someone made a booboo one day here ;)

Regards,
Shannon

[Fred Martin_1]

This begs the question, how could this happen? We discovered once on a SunOS system that some restores from tape, if not properly done, would cause it. And, obviously, simply and error by an admin. I'm wondering if you figured out yours.

[RedBack]

Fred,

Im not sure as it was done before I joined the company. I dont believe he had root access as he was a DBA. I guess I will never know.

Thanks to all who replied.