Data Sharing and Access Control by Shared Storage Folder¶
Note
Objectives
- Share user’s storage folders to other users
- Understand the sharing by group storage folder (admin-only)
You may need to share the contents of a storage folder with other users or group members to collaborate. For this purpose, Backend.AI provides flexible folder sharing feature.
Sharing user’s storage folders with other users¶
Let’s learn how to share your personal Storage folder with other users. First,
log in to User A’s account and go to the Data & Storage page. There are several
folders, and we want to share a folder named test
to User B.
Inside the test
folder you can see files and directories like hello.txt
and myfolder
.
Confirm that the test
folder is not listed when logging in with User B’s
account.
Warning
If a folder named test
already exists in User B’s account, User A’s
test
folder cannot be shared with User B.
Back to User A’s account and click the third icon in the Control column on the
right of the test
folder. Enter User B’s email in the email input field and
click the SHARE button to send a sharing invitation. No actual email is sent,
and invitations are generated through the Backend.AI database. In the case of
Permissions, if you check View, it is shared as read-only, and if you check Edit
together, even write operation is allowed to User B. If you want to share with
multiple users, you can also click the + button to enter additional emails.
Back to User B’s account and visit to the Summary page. At the bottom of the page, you can see an invitation with the title Invitation arrived. Click the ACCEPT button to accept the invitation.
Visit the Data & Storage page and check that the test
folder is displayed in
the list. If you don’t see it on the list, try refreshing your browser page.
Since you have accepted the invitation, you can now view the contents of User
A’s test
folder in User B account. Compared to the other folders created by
User B, the test
folder has no management icon in the Control column. You
can also see only the R (read-only) mark displayed in the Permission column.
Let’s navigate inside the test
folder by clicking the folder icon in the
Control column of test
. You can check the hello.txt
and myfolder
that you checked in the user A’s account again. Let’s create a compute session
by mounting this storge folder with the user B’s account.
After creating a session, open the web terminal and check that the test
folder is mounted in the home folder. The contents of the test
folder are
displayed, but attempts to create or delete files are not allowed. This is
because User A shared it as read-only. You can see UPLOAD FILES button and
NEW FOLDER button are disappeared, and READ-ONLY FOLDER text display on that
spot. Also operations modify icon and delete icon are also disabled since the
folder is read-only. User B can create a file in the test
folder if it has
been shared including write access.
This way, you can share your personal storage folders with other users based on your Backend.AI email account.
Note
Backend.AI also provides sharing group folder to group members. To See the detail, go to sharing a group storage folder with group members.
Adjust permission for shared folders¶
If you click the fourth person icon in the Control column, you can see a list of users who have shared the folder. Click Select permission to set the sharing permission.
- View: Invited users only have read access to the folder.
- Edit: The invited user has read and write access to the folder. The user cannot delete folders or files.
- Edit+Delete: The invited user has full access to the folder and can delete files or folders.
- Kick out user: Retrieves the user’s invitation. The user can no longer view or use the folder.
Note
Renaming vfolder itself is available for the owner only, even if the user has granted Edit or Edit+Delete permission. Please note that Edit permission does not provide renaming vfolder.