Creating and Assigning Permissions to a Shared Folder on Windows NT

Creating and Assigning Permissions to a Shared Folder on Windows NT

In Exercise 8.3, you create and share a directory called Public. The group Everyone is given Read permissions to the directory, and the group Local Training is given Full Control. Remember that only directories can be shared, and all files and subdirectories within that directory are available over the network through the share. Exercise 8.3 assumes a FAT partition with no NTFS file-level security, or an NTFS partition on which no restrictions have been set. Remember that NTFS is the native Windows NT file system, and that it allows for additional security beyond what FAT can offer.

Rights and permissions also can be given directly to user accounts themselves, but this is not recommended. Not only is such security cumbersome, but it is also difficult to administrate and troubleshoot.

If you have a user who has specific resources that are different than those of anyone else on the network, resist the urge to simply assign that user the needed permissions directly. Rather, create a new set of groups (Local and, if needed, Global), place the user into the proper group or groups, and then assign permissions and rights through the Local groups as needed.

This might seem unnecessarily redundant, but it can be very useful later on, especially if the user leaves your organization and is replaced by a new user who now needs the same permissions. The new user simply can be placed into the needed group(s), and the old account can be removed from them. If, on the other hand, you have assigned file system permissions directly, you then must hunt down all the directories to which the original user had access, remove the old user from each one, and then insert the new user.