Grant access to folders in my homedir to other users

ℹ️ Support
1

Greetings guys,

I finally found some time to install Nextcloud on a dedicated virtual Ubuntu 16.04 machine (64bit, latest). My initial tests are fine, I can connect and authenticate against my Active Directory.

At the moment I have some customer data organised in folders. I want to create a dedicated login for every customer, so he can install Nextcloud Agents to always have the latest versions of his documentation handy.
The best way would be to somehow add folders like myhome/Documents/CustomerA/ to the root of the user for CustomerA, myhome/Documents/CustomerB/ to the root of the user CustomerB and so on. That way I could guarntee that everybody has always the latest files.
The best case would be to let them read-only access these files/folders only, so I basically create an authenticated one-way sync, if you want to call it that way.

I heard from a friend that the best way to somehow get there is to create shares, but I am not very sure how this is achieved? I would like to encrypt all the data at some point. Can I do this with this scenario, or does somebody has a better way to achieve this?

Regards
Johannes

2

What you have in mind is something Nextcloud does very well in my experience. Every file or folder has a share icon (just like on mobile apps), and you can set permissions on that folder. It will show up in the home of any users you allow access to it. Allow me to point you to the user guide:
https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/14/user_manual/files/access_webgui.html#file-controls

Regarding encryption, you can encrypt server-side (rather than end-to-end) without anyone knowing the difference. I’ve not tried end-to-end encryption + sharing with other users, but if you trust your server to encrypt files at rest, it certainly works.

3

mactrent, thank you for your reply and your link. The manual is for version 14, I am running 13 atm. Shall I wait until I get into the staged update (nothing shows up yet) or is this something 13 can also do?
big thanks
johannes

4

I’m also on 13 atm, and this works the same way. That same site has a manual for version 13 (https://docs.nextcloud.com/ gives you the choice of versions), and though I can’t access it right now, I’m sure the documentation is also largely the same. This just works.

5

I tried it (quick n dirty, tbh), but it seems to be rock solid. I just have to test the download/sync thing, but so far it it looking very well :slight_smile: