Re: Home dir Permissions

[Remco Blaakmeer <remco@blaakmeer.student.utwente.nl>]

On Fri, 30 Jan 1998, Tim Thomson wrote:

> Hi,
> I like to have personal web space turned on (ie http://server/~tim/), so I
> can easily access files (such as lynx bookmarks - point the bookmark file
> at /~/HTML/bookmarks.html, I can then pick this up on any remote system).
> 
> What I want to know is, what are the best permissions to set my home
> directory to and the HTML directory to.
> 
> Ideally, I would like my home directory to be: drwx------, so no-one can
> read anything - but then they can't get to HTML.
> 
> Can I get it to show only HTML in my home directory - the rest of the
> files are completely hidden - can't even see the names of files? Or is
> this asking a bit too much?
> 
> The only solution I can come up with is to keep chmodding files so only I
> can read them (usually files in your home directory are publicly
> readable, the directory is drwx------, but not with web access on!!!

Well, if you want any files in your home directory to be world-readable,
the home directory must be accessible. It doesn't have to be readable if
the program accessing the files knows their names in advance, however. So,
your home directory can be drwx--x--x and the ~/public_html directory can
also be drwx--x--x . Then, no other user will be able to see any files in
your home directory, but any user that knows you have a pub_html directory
can do get a file listing for that directory. So, you could have:

drwx--x--x  /home/tim
   # anyone can read any file if they know/guess the name and the file
   # permissions say they can read the file, but only you and root can get
   # a list of all files that are in this directory
-rw------- /home/tim/.Xauthority
   # this _needs_ to be unreadable for anyone but you
drw-------  /home/tim/mail/
   # this is also one that is good to be unreadable for 'world'
-rw-r--r--  /home/tim/.plan
   # world-readable info for 'finger'
drwx--x--x  /home/tim/public_html/
   # world-readable directory for www pages, doesn't have to be readable
   # if there is an index.html file
-rw-r--r--  /home/tim/public_html/index.html
   # of course, all files that must be accessible for a www-server need
   # to be world readable, the dirs only need to be executable

> BTW, please CC replies to me, I'm not on list right at the moment  :)

OK.

Remco


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