Situation:
Group A requires access to /path/to/dir/foo to upload files through ssh or ftp, but the directory in question: /path/to/dir/foo is owned by group B (if you'd like: /path is recursively owned by B), which should stay this way, for security reasons.
My attempt for a solution:
I create a symbolic link to /home/A, which A owns. Next, I grant permissions so A can access the symlink:
sudo ln -s /path/to/dir/foo /home/A/foo
sudo chown -h A:A /home/A/foo
I figured that /path/to/dir/foo should at least be owned by a group that A is part of:
sudo addgroup C
sudo useradd -G C A
sudo chown -R B:C /path/to/dir/foo
sudo chmod -R 774 /path/to/dir/foo
After doing all that, I connected through an FTPS client as user A and changed directory to: /home/A. To my surprise the symlink is not visible, which is odd, because the proFTPd is set up to show symlinks.
I also tried connecting through SFTP to the same directory. This time the symlink was visible, but when I tried to access it, I got the following prompt:
Cannot open remote file '/path/to/dir/foo'.
Permission denied.
Error code: 3
Error message from server: Permission denied
That leaves me with little to no alternatives, since this was the easiest solution I could think of.
Desperate attempt:
I granted global permissions to /path/to/dir/foo, but I still couldn't access the symlink foo in /home/A as user A. Meaning: ls -l /path/to/dir/foo would print -rwxrwxrwx.
Question:
How do I create a symlink /home/A/foo which points to /path/to/dir/foo. Which A can access, despite /path/to/dir/foo being mostly owned by user:group B (/path is owned by B) ?
