The proper hierarchy of shared directories on Linux?

[Gilbo]

I have a rather simple question regarding the standard way to organize shared directories on a Linux fileserver. It's really nothing more than a question of good form.

I've got a pair of home fileservers that store my music, DVDs, and my photographs. So far, everything is in subdirectories of my home directory on the servers. I want to set up a configuration where other users can recieve varying levels of access to some of these media files (music for example) via NFS exports. I'm going to move these subdirectories out of my home directory, but I've never really figured out where they should be moved to.

I was thinking something like /home/music, but 'music' isn't an actual real user, so that seems wrong to me. But then I have no idea where else it should go. Of course, putting this data anywhere other than in the home directory seems like even worse form... So, is /home/music, or /home/photos the correct way to do this? And then, for example, have it mounted to the various users as /jane/music, or /joe/music via NFS exports on the servers?

 

[Gilbo]

Wait a second... would /home/music even be possible? I mean, wouldn't that mean that the only normal user with access to that directory would the owner, music?

Oh lordy... the simplest things...

 

[Gilbo]

Oh and by /joe/music and /jane/music in my first post, I actually meant /home/joe/music and /home/jane/music.

 

[Gilbo]

LOL. Mounting it to /mnt/music might make more sense eh?

I think using /home/music on the server will work alright if I'm not running NIS on the network. Does this make any sense? The thing is, I'm thinking about running NIS too...

 

[blakerwry]

Just make a new folder off root, mine is called /share and is stored on its own partition. However you are free to use the /home directory if you want, even if you dont create an actual user with that name.

 

[Gilbo]

My root filesystem is on an 8GB partition on this computer and all the disk space is already assigned to one filesystem or another, so I went with the /home/music route.

I just chgrped /home/music to be owned by my account, and then chmoded it to appropriate permissions so that other users have the access I want them to. It worked out well.