On Monday 2009 January 12 12:56:56 Florian Mickler wrote: >Last week my mother (supplied by me with a debian-testing system, >running kde) did call me with fear in hear voice: "the computer isn't >working anymore! and all my files are lost! and my emails! and the >internet has vanished!" > >soon i found out, that she had tried to clean up her homefolder >(organizing her files in folders, as she has learned in some >computer-course she has taken) Organizing *her* files in one thing, and good. Organizing application files is usually a no-no unless you are fully aware of everything that can break (and are willing to fix it). >somehow she has succeeded in moving her complete homefolder >(.*-files included) into subfolders of her homefolder... >i don't know how that can happen, but apparently there are no >safeguards in place. (Or at least they are easily clicked away) I suppose that is by design. UNIX (and Linux) made it a point to make sure that files and be moved/renamed/removed when they are in use. Also, user have full access to files in their home folder by default, even if the beginners maybe shouldn't use all that access. ISTR a young freshman that completely broke their university email by hand-editing their mailbox. I can't think of any solution that wouldn't make things more difficult. My first instinct was to a-r ~her_user, and have all her files reside under ~her_user/Documents or something. Unfortunately, this will prevent programs from creating ~her_user/.application, maybe not *too* much of a burden if she's already got all of those .*-files. It wouldn't prevent her from writing new settings into an existsing .file or creating/updating files like .directory/some_setting. You might be able to get the desired behavior by using acls. (Removing the ability to rename/delete files in ~her_user, while keeping the ability to create files in ~her_user would be a start.) -- Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. ,= ,-_-. =. bss@iguanasuicide.net ((_/)o o(\_)) ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy `-'(. .)`-' http://iguanasuicide.net/ \_/
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