This is a utility that sets Access Control Lists (ACLs) for files and directories for linux hosts. I’m managing a Linux host on AWS and a design firm is working on the website itself. Even though the host itself is a sandbox webserver, I don’t want to give out root credentials – so we set ACLs.
Lets take a look at an example:
User ec2-user wants to read, write, and executable permissions on directory /home/web.
This is how you set the permissions:
[ec2-user@sandbox html]$ sudo setfacl -m u:ec2-user:rwx /home/web
The -m option sets the ACL for the file or directory.
The u: option specifies the user you wish to grant access
The r option allows read access
The w option allows write access
The x option removes previous ACLs
You can look at more flags and read more on setfacl here: http://linux.die.net/man/1/setfacl