Hi there, I’m on Bazzite KDE and recently somehow lost a my “gaming” folder…? No idea how but must gave been user faulty, e.g me. Therefore wondering if it’s possible to lock certain folders so that this cannot accidentally happen?
I think looking into man chattr is a good option for this
Not really afaik, you can make file immutable with chattr +i /path/to/something but that means you cannot write to it either, which will probably cause problems.
Thanks for your input! This is defo something i do need to learn from indeed. This happened on a pretty fresh install too, the only program linked to that specific folder/path, was Bottles, as I need it for running the executeable for the game. No addtional drives or mounts (other than what Bottles is responsible for). However I would still like to be able to “lock” folders just to prevent my own sillyness from deleting it again.
Sure, regular file permissions can do that. You may need to make the folder owner someone else, and set the sticky bit.
sudo chattr +i (folder) prevents anything to modify/delete folders and files
Add -R for setting the flag for all subdirectory/files
Thanks I might try this! However does this allow for reads/writes from the system? Considering this is a folder for games, the files are constantly changing, such as the game save files etc…
If you’d like to look into it further. the +i flag in chattr is setting an attribute making the file (everything in Linux is a file, so yes this even means directories) immutable. When a file is immutable, it isn’t possible to change the ownership, group, name, or permissions of the file, nor will you be able to write, append, or truncate the file.
It’s been a while since I’ve used it, but I don’t believe it’s possible to have an immutable directory where you can still modify the contents therein, but I may be misremembering that. It would seem unlikely since adding content to the directory should require that you modify the links for the directory, which shouldn’t be allowable with an immutable object?
It’s possible that the +a chattr attribute may achieve what you’d prefer. I believe that flag will make it so that files (and again, everything in Linux is a file) can be created and modified, but never deleted. I’ve actually never used this one, but I can foresee how this still may not be ideal for your wishes since updates to games may expect to be able to delete old content which would be thwarted here. 🤷
I don’t believe it’s possible to have an immutable directory where you can still modify the contents
Not directly under that directory, but you can modify directories under it. Attributes only apply to the directory’s own alocation table and child directories have their own tables.
Also you can modify the content of the files in the directory. The attributes only refer to removing or adding files or other operations that modify the directory’s table.
