hexchaos wrote:

> I understand it these file permissions grant everyone full access.

Only if you're using a POSIX filesystem like ext3, reiserfs, etc.
Filesystems like NTFS have special privileges (and some stuff can be
controlled by mount options in /etc/fstab).

>> the recommended thing is to create a firebird group and put the 'firebird' user in it.
>
> But if I do that, then the user account will appear on the login screen

Not necessarily, that can be configured. I don't know which DM you are
using but both KDM and GDM that are used in most of modern distributions
are configurable. It's very easy to remove some usernames from the login
screen.

> and users will be able to log in under that name

You can disable the login with KDM/GDM config and also set the login
shell to /bin/false if you want to prevent logging into account via
terminal. Although, if you simply lock the password for the user, login
would not be possible anyway (except "su"-ing from root account into it).

> I want to store the database on /mnt/accumulator, which is an NTFS partition on a separate drive.

Why?


--
Milan Babuskov
http://www.flamerobin.org
http://www.guacosoft.com