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RTFM · Troubleshooting

Users, groups and permissions

Saphira follows BSD-style account management: adduser and addgroup. Diagnose permission failures methodically instead of chmod-ing hopefully.

Saphira Linux dragon mascot

Who am I, and in what groups

Identity facts
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.

Account lifecycle
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 developers

Exactly 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.

Path-wide permission view
ls -la /srv/example/
stat /srv/example/file
namei -l /srv/example/file   # walk whole path showing each hop's perms

Prove 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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