limiting users to their home directory

[Smoot Carl-Mitchell]

On Tue, 2008-12-23 at 09:21 +0000, Kenneth P. Turvey wrote:

> > Take a look at rbash - restricted bash shell.
> 
> See and edit... I don't think rbash is going to help here.  You need a 
> complete chrooted environment to work this out.  Do a google search on 
> chroot.  I doubt you really want what you say you want, but if you do, 
> that's the only way you are going to get it.  Hard links are your friend. 

rbash does some interesting things which may be adequate depending on
the level of security required. I noticed there are some problems with
shell escapes in commands (vim) where you can escape to a bash shell and
get out of the restricted environment.  I agree it is not as secure as a
chrooted environment, but it may meet the OP's needs.

What is needed here is an assessment of the security risks to the
system. The most obvious is a user exploits a security vulnerability and
gains root access.  chroot does not entirely eliminate that possibility,
but it does provide a layer of protection against such exploits,
depending on the architecture of the chrooted environment.
-- 
Smoot Carl-Mitchell
System/Network Architect
smoot at tic.com
+1 480 922 7313
cell: +1 602 421 9005