Preventing root from deleting files

[chrisw669]

I was wondering if there was a way to prevent even root from deleting certain files with the standard rm command.

I sadly made a rather bad mistake this morning by deleting a couple of very important files. I know if you are not root and try to delete a file it asks if your sure you want to delete. Is it possible to set root user up this way?

 

[donttreadonme]

rm -i # will prompt for removal

 

[wraheem]

As far as I know there is no way in AIX to prevent someone with root access from deleting a file if they wanted to. There is however a linux command named chattr that will change the files attributes that even root can't delete the file.

I've seen a lot of Linux/AIX compatibilty stuff at IBM's site, maybe they have a port.

Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.

 

[mjldba]

You might also put this line in the system wide profile (/etc/profile) that gets executed prior to your own personal .profile

alias rm="rm -1"

This way you always get the interactive action of the -i option and it'll make it a bit cumbersome when you WANT to do a mass delete but at least it'll save you from a replay of your mistake.

Everyone has been there, everyone has done it.

 

[Yegolev]

you should export that alias, and use -i instead of -1 i think... but aliases are not exported from /etc/profile. add this to /etc/environment:

alias -x rm='rm -i'

alternatively, you can set up an environment file just for root. to do this, put this line in root's .profile:

export ENV=filename

generally this is done as per my own .profile, in its entirety:

export ENV=~/.kshrc

if [ -s "$MAIL" ] # This is at Shell startup. In normal
then echo "$MAILMSG" # operation, the Shell checks
fi # periodically.

f

all of my other stuff, exported aliases, env vars, function listings and directory, and other such, are in my .kshrc.

IBM Certified -- AIX 4.3 Obfuscation

 

[chrisw669]

Doh, didn't think about creating an alias.

One problem tho, what would the reason be for root to not read it's own .profile in /home/root?

 

[chrisw669]

nevermind. moved .profile to / and works fine.

 

[mjldba]

sorry about the rm -1, I meant to write rm -i

It's been a crazy morning & I didn't proof read.

My bad