Why a given user can access a folder and another one does not?

Question

I have two servers:

Server one:

deploy@server:/home/vftp$ ls -la
total 24
drwxr-xr-x 6 ftp  ftp  4096 May  7  2013 .
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 Jul 19  2013 ..
dr-xr-xr-- 3 ftp  ftp  4096 Feb 18  2013 ald

deploy@server:/home/vftp$ cd ald
deploy@server:/home/vftp/ald$ 

Server two:

deploy@server:/home/vftp$ ls -la
total 24
drwxr-xr-x 6 ftp  ftp  4096 Mar 17 11:01 .
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Mar 17 12:44 ..
dr-xr-xr-- 3 ftp  ftp  4096 Mar 17 11:01 ald

deploy@server:/home/vftp$ cd ald
bash: cd: ald: Permission denied

I can't understand anything about this behaviour. I need the deploy user in the "server two" to access the ald folder.

Any thoughts?

Answer 1

Access to directory is controlled by the execute attribute (x).

Your ald directory has permission to execute only to user/group so user deploy on server1 is probably a member of the group ftp, while on server 2 he isn't.

Either change the group membership of deploy on server2

useradd -G ftp deploy

or add others execute permission to ald directory

chmod o+x ald