I think everyone might come across this problem. How to share your Music and Videos with other users in linux machine..? For mine (username is arul ) I have all music and videos in my home folder. I want to share those with others ( username is friends ) in the same machine. You can ask, by changing the permission of all files with in folder can solve this issue.
Yes you are correct. But this is a partial solution. When you add / create new files with in that folder it have the old permissions. To solve this issue, create / add file with particular permission in that folder. Here is it how to do that.
First you have create new group. This is an optional one, you can use anyone of your old group. For me I created a new group called "media". Assign this group to user whom want you share.
sudo groupadd media
sudo usermod -a -G media friends
groups friends
In second command option "-a" is important. Then only this group is append to the existing group list otherwise all sub-groups are removed. The final command will display the user is belong to which are the groups. You can also do this using GUI. Goto System → Administration → Users and Groups
Add new group and assigned to users
Change group to "media" for existing files and folder with in which directory you want to share.
sudo chgrp -R media Music/
sudo chmod g+s -R Music/
sudo chmod 755 -R Music/
In command "-R" for recursive operations. It will change all folders and subfolders files. Second command for set group id for Music and sub directory. Final command for RWX access for user and RX access for group, others for existing files.
Now when you create a new directory with in Music. The "media" group is assigned to that folder. it will look like
arul@arul-laptop:~/Music$ mkdir sample
arul@arul-laptop:~/Music$ ll
drwxr-sr-x 2 arul media 4096 2011-08-19 00:06 sample
Music folder list view
Now login as other user. create symbolic link for media folder for easy access.
friends@arul-laptop:~/Music$ ln -s /home/arul/Music ./"music on arul"
To know more about File permission view this ubuntu help page.