password on a file

[shabakeh]

hi everyone

i need to put password on defined files. i need to put password for open a file even config files. how can i do that?thanks in advance

[marriedto51]

Have a read up on how to change ownership of files (with the command chown) and permissions of files (with the command chmod) -- that will allow you to determine which users can read, write to, or execute any given file.

Greater control is available using SElinux, but I have to say that I (personally) have never needed it, and so don't really understand it!

[shabakeh]

i need to ask password even root want to open a file. how can i do that?

[Gareth Jones]

It sounds like you need to use encryption.

If the files can be kept together in a single directory hierarchy, you could use eCryptFS – this creates an encrypted directory which you need a key (pass-phrase) to access.

If you want to lock files arbitrarily, you'd better look at GPG, but it's a bit overkill perhaps.

[RupertPupkin]

Originally Posted by shabakeh

i need to ask password even root want to open a file. how can i do that?

Emacs has an easy frontend to GPG that lets you encrypt/decrypt files with a password (assuming you have the gnupg2 and pinentry-gtk[or -qt] packages installed). Just open the file in Emacs, go to Tools --> Encryption/Decryption --> Encrypt File, and you should be prompted for the password to use. Then whenever you open the encrypted file in Emacs you'll be prompted for the password to decrypt it. That's basically what I use for a password manager: an encrypted file of passwords.

[bonedome]

Hello
bcrypt and ccrypt are very small and very simple to use, they use quite old encryption methods that won't stop the FBI or MI5 but good enough for most people