Read only /root folder

Yannis

5/10/24, 7:48 AM

Can a user have read-only access to the /root folder? For example, only in the .bash_history file.

0 + 5

root

files

read-only

matigo

5/10/24, 7:53 AM

If I am understanding your question correctly, and if you are running a recent version of Ubuntu, the answer is *ideally* "No". You can, of course, have an administrator change the access permissions of the `/root` directory to allow others to access it, but it's not a good idea as there are files that expect to be owned and accessible only by `root`.

Yannis

5/10/24, 8:05 AM

You understood my question correctly. I want read-only access to the history file of the root folder. Thanks!

Rinzwind

5/10/24, 9:15 AM

No, /root is root's home. A user can not even enter the directory /root. "have an administrator change the access permissions of the /root directory to allow others to access it," I consider that a serious security breach. Users have NOTHING to do on the base system. Only the admin and that one can do "sudo" to get into /root. And an admin can always do more than read.

Rinzwind

5/10/24, 9:17 AM

I would do it like this: have the system copy the file using that user as owner to a location where that user can view files every so often (could be x-minutes but also a trigger checkgin for new lines in the file) Altering is possible but it will be overwritten by a new copy action.

user535733

5/10/24, 12:01 PM

Confused by the question: On a typical multi-user Ubuntu system that is properly administered, there should normally be no `/root/.bash_history` file to view anyway, as the root login account is disabled. There seems more to this story than so far disclosed.

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