**Andreas Wiese** say that if you have common group id across all hosts you may solve your issue with `setgid` bit and ACL I ask question http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/273144/predefined-group-ids-across-linux-distros/ After own research found that such group exist across all touched distros: `sys` group share id `3` on Debian, Ubuntu, RedHat, Fedora, CentOS, Suse, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, MacOSX, Solaris. With this: $ sudo chgrp -R sys /mnt/data/dir $ sudo chmod -R g+s /mnt/data/dir $ sudo setfacl -R -m g:sys:rwx /mnt/data/dir $ sudo setfacl -R -d -m g:sys:rwx /mnt/data/dir and flavor of this: $ sudo adduser user sys you `user` be able to read/write any file on `/dir`. Most job may do `setgid` bit but unfortunately you usually have little control on `umask`. So ACL is used to provide complete solution. See also: * http://askubuntu.com/questions/12009/solving-permission-problems-when-using-external-ext4-hard-disk-with-multiple-lin/ * http://askubuntu.com/questions/252361/how-could-i-mount-an-ext4-partition-and-have-write-permission/ * http://serverfault.com/questions/306344/sharing-an-ext3-ext4-partition-on-external-drive/ <!-- -->