in windows, if i want i can passwd protect any directory which i need to restrict access to. Is there any such utility in linux?
I know file permissions can be used but still is there any utility

Hi!

You may want to take a look into The GNU Privacy Guard. You can easily protect files and directories with passwords like this:

not that I have seen, using GROUP permissions is the usual way to control access to folders or files.

That's actually a pretty groovy idea. How would you actually use the directories once encrypted though? Could it be done without decrypting them and creating a decrypted file?

password protect from whom? if you are 'root' nobody can see your files. if you are a user nobody except 'root' can see your files (you can use chmod 700 on all your files) and even if you do find a program that lets you password protect your files, the 'root' may easily bypass them unless you encrypted them even so there is no guarantees.

remember 'root' is supreme, 'root' is GOD!

If the person you want to protect the files from is logging in to the computer with a different user name, then it's easy -- just set the file permissions so that only the file owner can read it.
(setting file permissions -- command line: use the chmod command; in KDE: right-click on the file, and select 'permissions')

If the other person is logging in to the machine using the same login credentials as you, then you're missing all the fun: Linux is a fully multi-user system; each person can have their own log in, and once they're logged in, its like they've got the system to themselves -- they can then set up the environment just how they like it without interfering with anyone else's settings.

I guess it's just possible that you have two people using the same login, and you really don't want to have to change that (maybe you both share the same mailbox or something?). In that case, you're going to need to encrypt the files or something like that. You could log in as root and change the permissions to that only the root user can see the files, but that's not really what you should be using the root login for.

Hope that helps.

Linux has a great cryptography api built into the 2.6 kernel. This would probably be the most secure way to protects your files, even from root. I don't think even the NSA (or your countries equivalent) has the capability to crack a good twofish crypto scheme.

I used this guide to set it up on my own system.

Let me know if you need any help with it.

regards,
...drkstr