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mkm
Asked: 2010-11-02 10:36:19 +0800 CST

Disallow user from moving/renaming a directory?

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How can I disallow a user from moving/renaming a subdirectory of this home directory?

Even if a user doesn't have any rights on a directory, it can rename/move it as long as the source and destination parent directory are writable.

I had a similar problem on macosx. Users inadvertently drag&drop the "Library" folder somewhere else breaking everything as there are applications depending on that path.

I don't it would be better to depend on another path, outside the home dir, or use ".files" but I have a legacy situation.

I tried to fix the problem my putting the dir somewhere else and then making a "bind" mount

mount -o bind sourcepath /home/user/somedir

It prevents the renaming of the dir:

mv: cannot move `somedir' to `somethingelse': Device or resource busy

Does anybody know an easier way?

filesystem permissions

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Easiest is probably using chattr:

    sudo mkdir /home/user/somedir
sudo chown root:root /home/user/somedir
sudo chattr +i /home/user/somedir
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