[CoLoCo] permission question

[Paul Hummer]

> They say a little knowledge is dangerous. I think I'm finding out how 
> true that is. I was logged in as one kid trying to open a file in the 
> others home directory. It wasn't working and in my experience you can 
> usually open files in others /home. That seems to be the default in 
> ubuntu. However, for whatever reason it wasn't working so I tried to 
> "fix" it by chmod-ing to 655 (I thought this was the default perms for 
> /home) but it didn't help so I bumped it up to 777. It still didn't 
> work and I don't know why.
Uh oh, this could get messy...
>
> However, the permission changes f-ed up the users account as now it 
> won't log in. I get this error...
>
> "User's $HOME/.dmrc file is being ignored. This prevents the default 
> session and language from being saved. File should be owned by user 
> and have 644 permissions. User's $HOME directory must be owned by user 
> and not writable by other users."
>
> I tried doing
>
> sudo chmod -R 644 /home/user
>
> but that didn't help and when you do an ls -l it gives -????????? ? ? 
> ? ? for the perms and owner info. Changing to 655 gives
>
> -rw-r-xr-x 1 777 leina size date file.name <http://file.name>
Folders always need the x bit set, so a home folder might have 755 set.  
.dmrc should be set 600, because only the user should be able to 
read/write it.  Also, make sure the file is owned by the proper person 
as well (chown).  If a file doesn't absolutely need to be have the x bit 
set, it's probably a good idea not to have it set.

Some other files that should be user read/write only (600) are files in .ssh

Paul