RTFM · Troubleshooting
Users, groups and permissions
Saphira follows BSD-style account management: adduser and addgroup. Diagnose permission failures methodically instead of chmod-ing hopefully.

Who am I, and in what groups
id # uid, gid, supplementary groups
getent passwd <name>
getent group <group>Most 'permission denied' mysteries collapse once id reveals actual group membership — membership requires re-login to take effect after group changes.
Changing group membership does not retroactively alter running sessions. Log out fully, or spawn a fresh session that re-evaluates membership.
Adding and removing accounts
adduser walks interactively by default and accepts flags for scripted use; addgroup creates groups. Removal counterparts exist for clean deletion.
adduser alice # interactive
adduser -D bob # create disabled, set password later
addgroup developers # new group
adduser alice developers # add user to group
# Removing (whichever variant your userland ships)
deluser alice
delgroup developersExactly which removal variants your Saphira image ships depends on userland generation — run adduser --help to see your installed capability set rather than trusting docs from other distributions.
File permissions as system
Read the permission bits as questions, not decoration: owner/group/other × read/write/execute, and translate denial messages into path-level facts.
ls -la /srv/example/
stat /srv/example/file
namei -l /srv/example/file # walk whole path showing each hop's permsProve it works: least surprise achieved
a second terminal as the affected user performs the previously-denied action without umask fiddling or sudo abuse.
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