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desgua
Asked: 2011-04-05 17:22:52 +0800 CST

How to prevent a file under user folder to be deleted?

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How can I make some file impossible to be deleted by user even if it is under his/her home folder?

nautilus

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    It is possible to make a file impossible to delete, even from root, on an ext2/3/4 filesystem, changing a file system attribute of the file:

    $ cd
$ touch dummy
$ sudo chattr +i dummy
$ rm dummy
rm: remove write-protected regular empty file `dummy'? y
rm: cannot remove `dummy': Operation not permitted
$ sudo rm dummy
[sudo] password for enzotib: 
rm: cannot remove `dummy': Operation not permitted
$

    More information on chattr and lsattr manual pages.

    If later you want to delete the file you should use 

    sudo chattr -i dummy

    before using rm.

    There are two drawbacks to this:

    1. you have to be root to change attributes;
    2. you can forget about the attributes of that file or the way to change them, so that it seem you cannot delete the file anymore.
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