FTP Account Privileges

[anstr]

Can I set up a limited FTP account that has:

1. Write access to multiple directories that are not within one another? (Example: /webRoot/directory1/ and /webRoot/directory2/ where there is a /webRoot/directory3/ that I don't want to give access to)

2. Read access to the entire /public_html/ directory, but write access to only part of it?

[AndrewT]

1. No.

2. No.

[anstr]

Thanks for the quick response, Andrew.

In light of this, does anyone have an idea how more than one person can maintain a moderately large site without stepping on each other? I suppose that there are CMS options that will do check-in/check-out and enforce "rights" to various parts of the site. Is there anything short of that?

[ZYV]

Concerning the second question, I am not really sure whether it will work on Dathorn's setup or not, but if I were you I would try to create the following structure in my home directory:

/home/user/public_html/part1
/home/user/public_html/part2
/home/user/public_html/part3
/home/user/public_html/ftpuser1/part1
/home/user/public_html/ftpuser1/part2

where part1 and part2 are symlinks to the corresponding directories (these symlinks are created with the following shell command w/o quotes "cd /home/user/public_html/ftpuser1 && ln -s /home/user/public_html/part1"). So that part1 & part2 can be actually accessed by ftpuser1 and still he can't chime into the part3 folder.

What you are asking for (workflow system and flexible user privileges) is actually present in any industrial grade CMS (typo3, eZ Publish etc.), but IMHO they are hardly appropriate for the shared hosting environment. Still I think this can be implemented in CMS Made Simple either with the raw kernel, or with minimum patching. And I am pretty sure that competitors like Drupal or modx might have this kind of permission system implemented as modules or the like.

[anstr]

Back to my question #2 of a year ago. If I grant someone else FTP access to a directory, how can that person edit a file he didn't create and doesn't own?

I made all the files in a directory. Then I made an FTP account under a different name and FTPed in under that name to that directory. I could then edit a file under this new user name that is "owned" by my other (first) name. The file is, supposedly only editable by the owner (644). I know I am missing something here.

Is file ownership no help here?

[AndrewT]

All files on a given account are owned by the same system user (the cPanel user) regardless of which FTP user they are uploaded from. The FTP user merely gives them access to the account via FTP.