Only owner of a text file can "cat" a text file !

shipon_97 · 05-05-2008, 10:52 AM

Friends ,

Suppose as Oracle user I have create a file test and give some entry like :
vi test
"My name is john"

Now I want a situation where only oracle user can "cat" this "test" file . Another user (also root) cannot "cat" this "test" file ?

Is it possible to do ?

OR,
Is it possible to hide a line in a text file ?So that another user (except owner) cannot see the entry of the text file .

Plz help .. ...

TB0ne · 05-05-2008, 11:01 AM

Please see the man pages for chown and chmod.

The command chmod 700 will allow the owner of the file to read, write, and execute it, while no other users or groups (aside from root), can. The man pages will give you more detail

ranger_nemo · 05-05-2008, 11:01 AM

Root can do anything. If some other user has root access, then they can do whatever you can.

As for standard users, chown the file (owner.group) to whatever user it want...
chown oracle.oracle this_file

Then, chmod the file to owner only permission...
chmod 0600 this_file

That way, only the user oracle (or root) can read/write that file.

I'm pretty sure the second scenario isn't possible... If somebody has read permission for a file, then they can read the whole file.

unSpawn · 05-05-2008, 11:23 AM

* ...and if this is for obfuscating passwords or malarky like that you can just forget about it.