[cobalt-users] Please pity a newbie...file permissions

["Dana Millaway" <cobalt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ok, I know I don't know as much as all of you and I have tried looking on
the web and in more than a few manuals and more than one tutorial for this
answer.

It is my understanding that when you list all the contents of a directory
and the file permissions, you should get 3 sets of 3 codes designating
whether the user, group and world can read (r), write (w) or execute (x)
each file or directory (d).  In the line below, what the blazes does the "s"
stand for (and where should I have been able to find the information) and is
it a security issue?

drwxr-sr-x   20 ddisher  home         2048 Feb  2 16:03 teachers

As long as you are looking, if I change the owner of a directory within the
teachers directory, then can the owner of the teachers directory (ddisher)
still write to the modified directory?

We are using Macromedia Dreamweaver for the main webpage and Macromedia
Contribute for each teacher to create and maintain their own page -
assignments, events, etc, hopefully on at least a weekly basis. (It
automates nearly everything for them.  If they can fill out a table and
click "Publish", they can do a webpage.) We want them to use a template to
maintain consistency across our site.  Dreamweaver won't link the template
to each user if we have them keep their data in the user folder that our
Qube3 assigns them.  So we would like to assign them each a folder within
the teachers folder in the main website folder so they can ftp the data in
using their own login information rather than the webmasters.  Any
recommendations?


Dana S. Millaway
District Technology Coordinator
Holdingford Public School