Making directory that cannot be deleted but is otherwise normal (not immutable) and lets users having read, write, and execute permissions to contents

create_protected_directory.md

How to create an otherwise normal direcory that cannot be deleted

Author: Dainis Boumber

Overview

Follow the instructions in this gist to create a directory under / for which, depending on the user's permissions, it will be possible to:

• read, copy, write, move, paste, and delete files and folders inside
• run and execute programs and scripts within

yet it will NOT possible to:

• Delete the directory itself
• Move or rename it
• Change it's permissions, then proceed to do anything (can often be done without sudo)

Motivation

This is very useful for protection from accidental or malicious deletion of a directory containing all work-related projects or anything else important

Instructions

First, you need to be a root user, so do sudo su. Next, you will essentially copy over the permissions and access rights of the /tmp directory, because it does what our directory will be doing. In this example, we are creating a work directory:

root@ubuntu:/# mkdir /work
root@ubuntu:/# chmod --reference=/tmp /work

Now, log out of su and test if it worked:

dainis@ubuntu:/$ mkdir /work/ner
dainis@ubuntu:/$ ls /work
ner
dainis@ubuntu:/$ rm -rf /work
rm: cannot remove `/work': Permission denied
dainis@ubuntu:/$ rm -rf /work/ner
dainis@ubuntu:/$ 

This it, you are done!