Upgrading and Repairing Networks

Chapter 39. Rights and Permissions

SOME OF THE MAIN TOPICS IN THIS CHAPTER ARE

User-Level and Share-Level Security 722

Assigning User Rights for Windows 2000, Server 2003, and XP 725

NTFS Standard and Special Permissions 733

User Groups Make Managing User Rights Easier 736

User Groups in Windows 2000 and Server 2003 737

Active Directory Groups 738

NetWare 740

Unix and Linux 744

Controlling access to system and network resources is a very important topic for the network administrator to understand. In a homogeneous network where all file servers and clients are of one particular brand, it can still be difficult to keep track of all file and print shares and which users need access to these resources. When you begin to add a mixture of network nodes consisting of more than one operating system to create a more diverse network, you can end up with the requirement to understand the access restrictions imposed by more than one operating system.

Two kinds of identifying values are used to decide on access. The first is an identifier that uniquely specifies the user who is logged on to the system and the specific rights (or privileges) defined by an operating system. Rights are definitions of the types of actions that can be performed on the system by the users. For Windows Server 2003, the terms rights and permissions are used interchangeably when granting rights to a user account. The term permissions is also used, as described in the next paragraph, to define access and restrictions to files, directories, and other objects.

Permissions placed on each resource usually are granular, giving permission separately to read, write, execute, or delete a file or directory. Depending on the operating system, the names used for these permissions can vary, and other types of permissions and combinations of these basic types can be found.

The important point to remember when setting up new users or resources, or when troubleshooting existing connections, is that you might need to look at both ends: What rights does the user possess and what access controls (permissions) exist on the resource? Both of these factors determine what users can do on the network. This chapter takes a quick look at the concepts of rights and permissions in several major operating systems and discusses some of the methods used to solve problems related to them.