Share a Folder between two Local Users

I and my brother have User Accounts on this machine. I want to share the Documents directory with him.

Is there a STRAIGHTFORWARD way to do it?

I am not a power user so I am looking for a way to do this using nautilus, rather than a script or a way that requires creating symlinks.

I can download an application if i have to.

Last time I wanted to do this I just copied the contents to /home for both of us to use.

Something I can do in System Settings would be appreciated

Solution 1:

There are three steps to this process

Step One: Make your brother a member of your group.

Your group-name is same as your user-id. Say, if your user-ID is akumar your group name is also akumar. If your brother's ID is bkumar, then you want to make bkumar a member of the group akumar. See How to manage users and groups? for how to add your brother's user-ID to your group.

Step Two: Change the permission of the folder you want to share.

Open Nautilus. Right click on the folder you want to share. Go to permissions tab. look for the group permissions and change it into "Read and Write." Check the box for allowing the same permissions to the files and folders inside.

Step Three: Verify that your brother can create delete files in the shared folder.

Let your brother login to the computer. Open Nautilus. It will open to your brother's home folder. Navigate to your home folder and open the shared folder by:

click on Computer or System Files (depends on the version of Ubuntu) on the left panel.

Double click on home folder, double click on folder named akumar inside home.

Create a file in the folder. Delete the new file.

Step Four: (optional) Make a link of this folder to your brother's home folder.

while logged in as your brother, open another window of Nautilus next to the first one, by middle-click or Ctrl+Left click. In your own home folder where the shared folder resides, hold down Ctrl+Shift and drag the shared folder to your brother's home folder.

Hope this helps

Solution 2:

sudo mkdir /shared
sudo chmod a+rw /shared

Now everyone can see and edit the /shared folder. Feel free putting files there and everyone will be able to access this folder and share files between users.

Solution 3:

I would recommend the following solution: - Create a group for sharing, just call it "shared". - Add all users who should have access to the shared files to this group. - Create a directory outside of users homes, e.g. /shared for shared files. - Change group of this folder to the group for sharing and adjust group permissions. - Set group sticky bit for this shared folder.

Advantages of this solution: - Every file you copy into this folder automatically gets the shared group, so every user who is a member of this group can access these files without any additional effort. - You still can have your private files outside this folder with your personal group which are not accessible by other users as long as they cannot get root and they cannot boot with another Linux OS. But keep in mind: If you want to have real privacy then you have to use encrypted folders/files.

I'm wondering why Linux distributions still have no common solution for this problem, because nearly everyone is concerned.