file passwords

[simon_164]

can we put a password on a tar file or a cpio file?
or any regular file. I am having the idea of creating the file then set ACL on the file for a special user and when i want to access it i will su. but how about putting in the tape? would the ACL be removed/
what do you think about all that?

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom simon,

yes.

Be careful with the permissions.

You should use vipw to access the actual password file.

SEP

[paolo barila]

Hi,

-yes the tar command removes ACL

-if a file belongs to root user and
has permission 400, every other user has to "su" to read it (you can tar and restore it).

You should consider installing "sudo" anyway.

Pablo

[Geoff Wild]

You could use pgp to encrypt/decrypt the file with a password.

Rgds...Geoff

[Mustafa Gulercan]

hi;
for HP-UX you should use gpg.
not pgp..

regards..

[Cesare Salvioni · Accepted solution]

hi
any kind of permission is useless if you give away the files. Only way is crypting in someway and give the password to the recipient.
The suggested way are the best but on hpux you don't have, in my knowledge, them by default.
Instead you can use the simple command crypt:

tar cvf tarfile.tar .
crypt < tarfile.tar > tarfile_crypted.tar

it ask a password and crypt the file
to decrypt
crypt < tarfile_crypted.tar > tarfile.tar
again it ask the password

This is also the crypting algorithm used by ed and vi to crypt/decrypt text files

hope it helps

[simon_164]

thank You!!