I think this is a long winded way of saying directory entries are access controlled by directory permissions? There was a bit too much narrative for me to know if the point was that this was surprising or wrong or what.
Sure, though i think the presentation obscures the obvious corollary, assuming the goal is to annoy the user: mkdir root-dir; touch root-dir/root-file really will leave you with an unremovable file.
I think it is great. It describes a situation which you rarely hear about anymore: when your user and root aren’t actually the same person!
I used to live in this situation. My sysadmin and I were always messing with permissions–inside my $HOME and outside, too. He believed in giving each user as much power as was safe. ‘Safe’ meant “can’t bring down the system or read other users’ data”. I learned a lot from him!
I think this is a long winded way of saying directory entries are access controlled by directory permissions? There was a bit too much narrative for me to know if the point was that this was surprising or wrong or what.
Yeah, this is the TL;DR but I posted it mainly because it was fun to read.
Sure, though i think the presentation obscures the obvious corollary, assuming the goal is to annoy the user: mkdir root-dir; touch root-dir/root-file really will leave you with an unremovable file.
Oh yeah, and I haven’t heard of
chattr +i <filepath>before, which can be used to make files immutable. This could be quite handy.I think it is great. It describes a situation which you rarely hear about anymore: when your user and root aren’t actually the same person!
I used to live in this situation. My sysadmin and I were always messing with permissions–inside my $HOME and outside, too. He believed in giving each user as much power as was safe. ‘Safe’ meant “can’t bring down the system or read other users’ data”. I learned a lot from him!
I also recently came across this. It’s neither surprising nor wrong, just something I hadn’t thought about before.