8.2 Making Home Directories Private

During the Open Enterprise Server 2 installation, the Linux User Management page lets you decide whether to set the system umask so that all users can see all the directories and files in the /home directory.

On an already-installed system, you can modify the umask setting so that directories and files are visible only to their owners.

  1. Access a shell prompt as the root user.

  2. Open /etc/login.defs with an editor.

  3. Change the umask value to 0077.

  4. Save the file.

Directories and files are now only visible to their owners (and the root user, of course). If you want to restore the default settings, change the umask value to 0022.

NOTE:Changing the umask affects directories and files created after the change, but does not affect permissions on existing directories. Existing directories must be changed manually.