How to hide directories and files from users?

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Max Money AWA
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How to hide directories and files from users?

#1 Post by Max Money AWA »

I have an old laptop, an Acer Aspire 3002 with XP, that was bogging at the load screen of Windows much less running anything else. I loaded Puppy Precise 5.6.1 to get it working again. It runs great now. However, there are all sorts of things I am unfamiliar with that I'd like to hide.

My main question is this ... what directories and files can I hide? I don't understand command line stuff or anything like that. I will not be the only one using this laptop, so I would rather not have areas open for people to get into and screw things up, me included. I would really like to be able to hide as much as possible in order to get things to look similar to XP in the directories.

I will gladly answer any questions. Thank you.

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Karl Godt
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#2 Post by Karl Godt »

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:wink:

What you want is probably fatdog that should have some kind of user login .

Otherwise it would be rm -rf / in the terminal to hide everything for free by removal of the whole installation .
«Give me GUI or Death» -- I give you [[Xx]term[inal]] [[Cc]on[s][ole]] .
Macpup user since 2010 on full installations.
People who want problems with Puppy boot frugal :P

Wognath
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#3 Post by Wognath »

Hello, Max Money and welcome.
I would rather not have areas open for people to get into
Puppy is not really intended to have unpriveleged users, but in precise, there is an option to log in as Fido. I have not done this, but someone else can tell you how, or see here: http://bkhome.org/blog/?viewDetailed=02240
what directories and files can I hide?
Modifying puppy menus is a bit involved. See http://puppylinux.org/wikka/JWMMenuCategory and for example http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=63009
You can customize the desktop easily. Get rid of desktop items by right clicking and then clicking remove item. You can add items to the desktop by going to /usr/share/applications and then dragging any of those icons to the desktop.
Finally, You can find out anything at all about puppy by using the puppy google search http://wellminded.com/puppy/pupsearch.html.
Hope this helps, one beginner to another...

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Galbi
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#4 Post by Galbi »

Since in Puppy you're always the user 'root' (like Administrator in XP) you can seriously damage your system (fortunatelly only the software, not the hardware) if you do something fool (Administrator can easily do: format C: and good bye) so:
- If you're not sure what you are doing, don't do it.

Perhaps a multi-user distro may fit better your needs, but it's more complicated to deal with permissions an so on.

Max Money AWA
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#5 Post by Max Money AWA »

So, I'm going to have to learn everything about linux first to get it the way I want it to look, correct? There doesn't seem to be an easy way of doing anything in linux.

Sorry, but I'm feeling very overwhelmed going over these forums and looking at the links posted above. I'm feeling completely lost and starting to second-guess loading Precise. I had no idea I was going to have to almost become a programmer to do anything with it.

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saintless
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#6 Post by saintless »

Max Money AWA wrote:So, I'm going to have to learn everything about linux first to get it the way I want it to look, correct? There doesn't seem to be an easy way of doing anything in linux.
Hiding directory or file is much easier than in windows.
Just rename the file or directory with . in the beginning of the name.
For example rename directory movies to .movies

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8-bit
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#7 Post by 8-bit »

Also, If you did a frugal install of Puppy, I would suggest that you make backups of your pupsave file. It contains all your personal settings, data, programs you have added, etc.
With a backup of your pupsave file, if you had to reinstall Puppy you would have the backup to get your PC back to a working condition with all your stuff intact.

Backup of the pupsave is not automatic though; so you would have to do a backup on a regular basis if you added or changed things.

And I would do that before attempting to hide directories as I do not know if an application that needs data in one of them would work with the directory being hidden.

amigo
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#8 Post by amigo »

Ahh, it is possible to 'hide' directories, by changing their names. BUT! This will break your whole system as everything is based on those directory paths and directly references them.

Come on guys, don't tell a guy in his first post here to 'rm -rf /'. OP, that little command will remove every file on your system, so don't use that command.

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Karl Godt
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#9 Post by Karl Godt »

Galbi wrote:Since in Puppy you're always the user 'root' (like Administrator in XP) you can seriously damage your system (fortunatelly only the software, not the hardware) if you do something fool (Administrator can easily do: format C: and good bye) so:
- If you're not sure what you are doing, don't do it.

Perhaps a multi-user distro may fit better your needs, but it's more complicated to deal with permissions an so on.
I cannot confirm that Linux does not damage your hardware !

1) Lost a whole Laptop with a privatix Linux full to USB that did not shutdown properly .
2) Lost one older HDD booting with the rw kernel parameter instead of ro .

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L18L
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#10 Post by L18L »


dancytron
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#11 Post by dancytron »

OP.

Okay, first you need to get used to the idea of just ignoring all the directories/folders except /root, mnt/home and usr/share/applications.

Browse to usr/share/applications. All these files are what create the menu items. You can do two things here.

First, you can drag them out on to the desktop and they will be like windows desktop shortcuts. Do this for all the programs you actually use so you don't have to mess with the menu. Right click for menu to clean up titles. Second, you can move the .desktop files someplace else (drag and drop), rename the with different extensions (right click) or delete them. Then they will no longer show up in the menu (you might have to restart x, reboot or run fixmenus to refresh).

After you get it set up, you can copy the save file and give one to each of your kids along with a backup. You can turn the passwords back on for each one, but I don't know how to do that off the top of my head.

linuxbear
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#12 Post by linuxbear »

Personally, I do not hide directories. Experienced nixers can find them. You could do it by encrypting folders. For myself, I individually encrypt and password protect files involving household expenses and contacts. Most of everything else, I do not worry about

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Semme
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#13 Post by Semme »

For the time being- PASS.
Last edited by Semme on Tue 13 Aug 2013, 10:29, edited 1 time in total.

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greengeek
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#14 Post by greengeek »

Max Money AWA wrote:There doesn't seem to be an easy way of doing anything in linux.
Hi Max, welcome to puppy. The problem with Linux is that there is in fact an easy way to do stuff. Way too easy. As Karl was suggesting by posting his "rm command" comment it is very easy to remove every directory on your system with a simple command.

The whole purpose of Puppy is to give total control to the operator - in the expectation that the operator WANTS to take responsibility for every aspect of their system.

Unfortunately that makes it unsuitable for family use if the family can't be trusted to leave things alone.

There are various threads on this forum which discuss how to run Puppy in "kiosk" mode, which means that the users only have access to part of the system - they can't get at the guts of it and do damage.

Unfortunately setting a puppy up this way takes a bit of fiddling. As far as I am aware no-one has yet offered an .iso of a "Kiosk Mode" puppy that you could just download and use, but maybe i have missed it along the way... Hopefully someone may point to a suitable thread.

EDIT :Here are two threads that might be of interest:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=75519

http://ns2.murga-projects.com/puppy/vie ... d051e565c5
.

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Karl Godt
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#15 Post by Karl Godt »

I think , installing Puppy should be fun ! .
If things break , then it's time to teach others in the family how this all works .
I have 3 partitions on each HD that I use as main installation - booting one day the partition on sda2 and the next day the partition on sda6 for example .
I don't share files much . I download emails for example to each partition using the current installed mail-client .

And don't forget : rm -rf / would also remove everything that is mounted in /mnt or /media for example -
thus nuking much more than the current installation if there is anything mounted :D
Some users want that Windows feature that all partitions are mounted at startup - I don't .
«Give me GUI or Death» -- I give you [[Xx]term[inal]] [[Cc]on[s][ole]] .
Macpup user since 2010 on full installations.
People who want problems with Puppy boot frugal :P

Max Money AWA
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#16 Post by Max Money AWA »

Thanks for the replies. I'm going to look over the suggestions, except for the "rm -rf" one. Thanks.

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Semme
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#17 Post by Semme »

This works well as not everyone is gonna know what you know- the commands to open it.

Code: Select all

sh-4.1# encfs -o nonempty ~/.unassuming_named_folder ~/unassuming_named_folder
Creating new encrypted volume.
Please choose from one of the following options:
 enter "x" for expert configuration mode,
 enter "p" for pre-configured paranoia mode,
 anything else, or an empty line will select standard mode.
?> p

Paranoia configuration selected.

Configuration finished.  The filesystem to be created has
the following properties:
Filesystem cipher: "ssl/aes", version 2:2:1
Filename encoding: "nameio/block", version 3:0:1
Key Size: 256 bits
Block Size: 1024 bytes, including 8 byte MAC header
Each file contains 8 byte header with unique IV data.
Filenames encoded using IV chaining mode.
File data IV is chained to filename IV.
File holes passed through to ciphertext.

-------------------------- WARNING --------------------------
The external initialization-vector chaining option has been
enabled.  This option disables the use of hard links on the
filesystem. Without hard links, some programs may not work.
The programs 'mutt' and 'procmail' are known to fail.  For
more information, please see the encfs mailing list.
If you would like to choose another configuration setting,
please press CTRL-C now to abort and start over.

Now you will need to enter a password for your filesystem.
You will need to remember this password, as there is absolutely
no recovery mechanism.  However, the password can be changed
later using encfsctl.

New Encfs Password: 
Verify Encfs Password: 
sh-4.1#
When done it's like this to unmount:

Code: Select all

fusermount -u unassuming_named_folder
Then this again to access:

Code: Select all

encfs ~/.unassuming_named_folder ~/unassuming_named_folder
EncFS Password:
EASY? 50/50.. Not if you don't frequent a shell.

Could it be automated? :roll: Probably..

ping -q SFR

Is there a GUI? Yep.

More? Yep.

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