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Thread: WARNING: Banning "other" from $HOME: Don't do it like I did!

  1. #1
    GhX6GZMB is offline Iced Almond Soy Ubuntu, No Foam
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    WARNING: Banning "other" from $HOME: Don't do it like I did!

    In another thread, I asked about the implications/ramifications of removing "other" rights from the $HOME directories.

    https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2460569

    This has turned out to be a total disaster, and I'm now forced to do a 100% complete new install and configuration. A lot of programs simply don't work anymore.

    My big mistake was removing "other" rights from the hidden directories/files. For the "normal" user directories it works fine.

    I apologise for inconveniences this may have caused others.

  2. #2
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    Re: WARNING: Banning "other" from $HOME: Don't do it like I did!

    Quote Originally Posted by ml9104 View Post
    This has turned out to be a total disaster, and I'm now forced to do a 100% complete new install and configuration. A lot of programs simply don't work anymore.
    Reinstalling because of wrong permissions on your $HOME??? Seems like total overkill to me.

    Also, in a corporate environment setting the permissions to "700" is totally normal (nobody but me has any business reading the files on my "$HOME" directory) so I fail to see what programs "don't work anymore" since restrictive permissions on your $HOME shouldn't have any influence on a system-wide program working or not...

    Unless you messed up the permissions in other places too, e.g. you modified places like /etc, /usr, /var, /lib and so on??

  3. #3
    GhX6GZMB is offline Iced Almond Soy Ubuntu, No Foam
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    Re: WARNING: Banning "other" from $HOME: Don't do it like I did!

    No, the problem is that I messed up the permissons on the hidden files.

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    Re: WARNING: Banning "other" from $HOME: Don't do it like I did!

    Which hidden files do you mean?
    Giving 700 permissions to everything in your home folder would include all the hidden files and folders so I don't really understand what you mean by giving wrong permissions to hidden files.

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    Re: WARNING: Banning "other" from $HOME: Don't do it like I did!

    Quote Originally Posted by ml9104 View Post
    No, the problem is that I messed up the permissons on the hidden files.
    And so? Giving "700" is standard too for most of them, especially critical things such as ~/.ssh have no business of having anything but "700".

    As I wrote before: A complete reinstallation just because some program for some stupid reason can't find it's dot-config file inside your $HOME seems excessive + overkill. You could simply create a 2nd user e.g. "User2" and then check what config file defaults this new guy would be given? Then just reproduce the permissions "User2" has on some of his files and apply them to the few files inside your $HOME that don't seem to work properly.
    Last edited by scorp123; April 25th, 2021 at 11:05 PM.

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    Re: WARNING: Banning "other" from $HOME: Don't do it like I did!

    As a distraction I would like to say that from 21.04 onward the home folder becomes private by default. I have just run a couple of tests from 20.04.

    1) Using the file manager I access the partition of a 20.10 install. I see all the system folders including Home which I open and then I open the username home folder and see all the folders and files we usually see.

    2) I try the same thing with 21.04 and when I open the system Home folder it is empty. There is no user name home folder. I have the same user name and password for several installs of Ubuntu/Linux on this computer. The only username home folder I cannot now access is the 21.04 user home folder.

    I assume that if there was more than one user on a 21.04 install each user's home folder would be not only inaccessible but also not viewable.

    Regards
    It is a machine. It is more stupid than we are. It will not stop us from doing stupid things.
    Ubuntu user #33,200. Linux user #530,530


  7. #7
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    Re: WARNING: Banning "other" from $HOME: Don't do it like I did!

    If you chmod 700 just the /home/username directory it should block everything under it, you shouldn't have to use the -R recursive switch.

  8. #8
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    Re: WARNING: Banning "other" from $HOME: Don't do it like I did!

    Installed Ubuntu Desktop (Gnome) 21.04 yesterday as a demo for my LUG. Had some issues, mainly with the GPU, resolution, and systemd-resolved after I masked it. Anyway, the /home looks like this:

    Code:
    $ ll /home/
    total 12
    drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4096 Apr 25 16:07 ./
    drwxr-xr-x 20 root root 4096 Apr 25 16:06 ../
    drwxr-x--- 17 tf   tf   4096 Apr 25 17:22 tf/
    I haven't noticed any issues related to that.
    I'm in the 700 group. Should be perfectly fine. This is normal and has been in corporate environments since before Linux existed.

    Code:
    drwx------ 17 tf   users   4096 Apr 25 17:22 tf/
    is very common. Or if you work in a team, then your primary group would be that for the team:
    Code:
    drwx------ 17 tf   accounting   4096 Apr 25 17:22 tf/
    Very common. The idea that a new group would be created for every freakin' user just seemed wrong to me when I first came on that with Ubuntu. It was not standard.

  9. #9
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    Re: WARNING: Banning "other" from $HOME: Don't do it like I did!

    Those hidden files contain configuration, cache and sometimes saved projects or something similar, belonging to particular applications and specific to the user. It should be no problem if they're not readable by others ... unless you run those applications as a different user or messed up ownership before. Have you ever used sudo with those applications? Or chown'ed any of those hidden files?

  10. #10
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    Re: WARNING: Banning "other" from $HOME: Don't do it like I did!

    How did you change the permissions?
    Is it possible that a "chmod -R" of some sort has recursively removed the execute permissions from all the sub-directories? If so, that is quite easily fixable.

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