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I'm running a Linux server at home, and I did just have my own username (javawag) with a www folder inside it for my website. However, I've since added a subdomain for my friend, who now has his own home folder, username, and Apache virtual site (~max/www). My problem now is that my home folder, other than containing my www folder, contains some sensitive data in other folders, which I don't want him to be able to see. How can I change the permissions of home folders so that only that user and root can view/edit, and all other users don't even have read access? The catch here is that the www folder is the server root for Apache, so the user www-data needs read access to the files still!

Thanks,

  • Javawag

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You could just change the permissions of your other (sensitive) subdirs with chmod 700 ~/sensitivedir.

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  • that's actually a really clever idea! my backup is an OS X "bundle" in my home directory, but that means it's just a subdirectory that OS X treats as a file... Linux, treating it as a directory, will allow for those permissions. Couple of quick questions with this though - is there a way to set it such that the default for new directories inside my home directory is permission 700? and also, if a user has read permission to a symlink to the directory, can they still read it even if the permissions for the directory itself don't allow it? (may take several reads to understand that :P)
    – Javawag
    Apr 24, 2011 at 17:11
  • You can set your umask in your login scripts to 057 (octal). But that affects everything, not just directories. Symlinks don't effect permissions, so no.
    – Keith
    Apr 24, 2011 at 17:19
  • You could also do this: chmod -R go-rwx ~/sensitivedir
    – Xenoactive
    Apr 27, 2011 at 23:13

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