Security of files

[Marcelo De Florio_1]

How can i return one file to back permisions ?

eg, rxw------ pepe
chmod 777 pepe --> rwxrwxrwx

and then return to rwx------, but I unknown the before premisions.

MDF

[Patrick Wallek]

The only way to find out what the permissions were before would be to look at a backup of the file.

There is no "undo" feature in HP-UX.

[Craig Rants]

Marcelo,
You could always play it safe and make a copy with that retains the previous permissions.

i.e...

cp -p file1 file1.orig

the -p will retain all the info in it's original format.

GL,
C

[S.K. Chan]

No way this can be done, at least not that I know of.

[Roger Baptiste]

hi,

Sorry, there is no command to figure out what was the old permission/ownership of the file. You would need the backup copy of the file.

If it is a system file, you can quickly check it up on another system.

-raj

[Bernie Vande Griend]

If you had a product installed such as Tripwire, CA's Access Control, or HP's IDS/9000 it could keep track of permission of files you want and in some cases, self-correct it. HP's IDS/9000 is free and has this ability if you need it. There was a interesting article on it recently in Information Security Magazine:
http://www.infosecuritymag.com/2002/mar/testcenter.shtml

[harry d brown jr]

MDF,

Like Patrick said, most backup software allows you to list the files on the backup media and they usually include the owner, group, file permissions, size, and date of the files.

live free or die
harry

[Steven Sim Kok Leong]

Hi,

Apart from checking out the previous permissions of files from backup media, you can also track the changes by making use of mkpdf, pdfck and pdfdiff.

You can run this every 24 hours or more frequently to detect changes to your files (such as permissions) and identify the changes that have taken place. pdfck and pdfdiff will inform accordingly.

Hope this helps. Regards.

Steven Sim Kok Leong