Why Worry about Home Directory Permissions?
Insecure home directory permissions can allow people to look through, or even change and delete, your files and directories. If your home directory is readable by others, then anyone who can login to any workstation managed by the Computer Support Group (CSG) may be able to see and possibly read any file or directory that you have stored in your account. If your home directory is writable by others, then anyone may also be able to create and possibly delete your files and directories.
How to Change Home Directory Permissions
To manage your home directory permissions, follow these steps:
Login to a CSG-Managed Linux Workstation
You can login to a CSG-managed Linux workstation at the console or remotely. To login at a console, see Starting a Session at the Console; to login remotely, see Starting Remote Session.
If you login to a console, you will need to open a terminal. To open a terminal, click on the window icon in the menu bar at the top of the screen. Or, click on Applications in the menu bar, select System Tools, and click on Terminal.
Change Your Home Directory Permissions
If you have a personal web page, use this command:
chmod 0711 ~
Otherwise, use this command:
chmod 0700 ~
Learn More about Permissions
You can use the Linux man command to learn more about permissions. Use these man commands to read the manual pages regarding permissions:
man chmod
man ls
man umask
man groups
man chgrp
