How to give user rights to a folder (for Dummies, please help)

Question

My userid, db2inst1, does not have rights to create, edit, and view files in it's home folder and subdirectories.
/export/home/db2inst1
I try to edit and view files in the sub folders, but get access denied. I thought it should have full rights to this folder?
I tried using the SMC as root, added the user db2inst1 to root and sys groups, then gave the user all rights, but that did not solve the issue.
What would be the terminal command to give this user, db2inst1, full rights to the home directory. It needs all rights to files created by other users. What ever is in the home folder and all subfolders under home, it needs the maxiumum access.

Answer 1

The short answer would be "chown -R <username> /export/home/<username>" where username is the user in question.
To be more polite you also need to change group ownership of users home folder to match primary user's group. Primary group can be seen by typing "id <username>", first group is the primary. If you know the group then you can do "chown -R <username>:<groupname> /export/home/<username>"
p.s. if you got to this because you created user with "useradd", then remember next time to use -m flag which creates user's home directory with apropriate permissions.