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Date:      Fri, 26 May 1995 11:53:55 UTC+0200
From:      Javier Martin Rueda <jmrueda@diatel.upm.es>
To:        questions@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Which files should have append-only and immutable flags?
Message-ID:  <706*/S=jmrueda/OU=diatel/O=upm/PRMD=iris/ADMD=mensatex/C=es/@MHS>

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I've been experimenting a little bit with the chflags command, and I was
wondering if there exists any recommendation about which files should have the
system append-only and system immutable flags on?

After a quick thinking, it seems that probably the following directories and
all the files inside should be immutable, as they are not supposed to change
in the operating system's lifetime:

/sbin, /usr/sbin, /bin, /usr/bin, /usr/lib, /usr/X11R6/bin, /usr/X11R6/lib

The files in the following directories should be immutable, but the directory
should not, as new files can be added. The directory may be append-only:

/usr/local/bin, /usr/local/lib

Several configuration files that are not supposed to change should be
immutable, such as:

/etc/rc, /etc/services, /etc/protocols...

And it would be interesting that some log files were append-only, such as:

/var/log/messages, /var/log/wtmp...

However, with the latter files, there's the problem that you cannot rename
them, compress them, or delete them so that you cannot rotate the logs while
multiuser.

Of course, for all this to work, the system security level should be 1 or 2.

Does anybody use flags, and can give some advise about their use?

PD: by the way, if a normal user tries to set a system flag in one of his
files, he doesn't succeed, but he gets no error either. Is that supposed to be
ok? I think that "operation not permitted" should be returned.




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