Sponsored Content
Full Discussion: How to make a file Hidden
Special Forums Hardware Filesystems, Disks and Memory How to make a file Hidden Post 62378 by Perderabo on Tuesday 15th of February 2005 01:24:01 PM
Old 02-15-2005
Unix doesn't support the notion of a hidden file. Even having a leading dot only hides the file from people who prefer to not see it. Almost everyone knows about "ls -a" and so on. Seeing a filename depends on reading the directory that contains it. So making a directory unreadable will "hide" all of the files it contains. There are a very few funky tricks to render files "hidden". Here is one...

One sure way to hide a file is to ensure that it has no filenames. A program can create a file, and then unlink it. No other program can now open the file. But the file will not disappear until every program that has it open closes it, perhaps by exiting. This happens a lot and it's probably the number one way that junior admins accidentally hide files from themselves. A filesystem will fill up and the admin will see a very large file called, say, huge.log. At this point he will do a "rm huge.log". But if a program still has that log file open, the space will not be freed. Until the program closes the file or exits, the space is still used. I suppose that we can call that file "hidden".

The other techniques all require root and cannot be generally applied. And they are not great ideas anyway so I won't mention them.
 

9 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

File and Directory Names become hidden

Something very weird has been happening when I'm creating files and directories. When I create a directory, at times depending on the directory name and depth, it becomes hidden and can only be seen typing "ls -a". When I say the name of the directory matters, "my_c++" will be hidden but using... (10 Replies)
Discussion started by: dbinsol1
10 Replies

2. UNIX Desktop Questions & Answers

Make a Hidden File

How to make a file Hidden whose name does not starts with . (dot) (sorry i am beginner) (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: gandhevinod
1 Replies

3. Shell Programming and Scripting

How to check for hidden file

Hi All, Is there hidden files somewhere here since it's showing "total 16", but no files being revealed ? $ ls -la total 16 8 drwxrwxrwx 2 zzz yyy 4096 Apr 26 12:00 ./ 8 drwxrwxrwx 9 zzz yyy 4096 Jul 31 16:59 ../ $ (8 Replies)
Discussion started by: Raynon
8 Replies

4. Shell Programming and Scripting

Finding Hidden files and protecting the folder containing hidden files from deletion

Hi. I have a script which is deleting files with a particular extension and older than 45 days.The code is: find <path> -name "<filename_pattern>" -mtime +45 -exec rm {} \; But the problem is that some important files are also getting deleted.To prevent this I have decide to make a dummy... (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: pochaw
4 Replies

5. Shell Programming and Scripting

make shell script hidden

Hi , I want my shell script to be hidden that only I can only access not even root user how can is it possible (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: kaushik02018
2 Replies

6. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Locating a hidden file

it seems one of my server's account was compromised. I caught a perl script running a hack/attack script: 20:23 /usr/bin/perl ./up **.**.**.** 0 120 I've disabled the user etc, but I cannot find the script "up" anywhere in the server. I tried using locate or find. any ideas? (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: MaRiOsGR
1 Replies

7. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

List all directories hidden or not hidden

I want to list all directories hidden or not hidden. ls -ld */ => shows only not hidden directories so i guess the answer would be to add the a option to show all files ls -lad */ => not working :confused: ls -la | grep "^d" => works But I would like to know why I can't use ls -lad... (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: servus
4 Replies

8. Programming

Perl scripting help for hidden file

Hi There, Can anyone please let me know, how to write hidden file in perl? I tried opning hidden file in write mode but its failing to create it. Appreciate your help in this. Thanks (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: ps_tech
1 Replies

9. Shell Programming and Scripting

Rsync - how to copy hidden folder or hidden files when using full path

Hello. I use this command : rsync -av --include=".*" --dry-run "$A_FULL_PATH_S" "$A_FULL_PATH_D"The data comes from the output of a find command. And no full source directories are in use, only some files. Source example... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: jcdole
2 Replies
DM(8)							    BSD System Manager's Manual 						     DM(8)

NAME
dm -- dungeon master SYNOPSIS
ln -s dm game DESCRIPTION
dm is a program used to regulate game playing. dm expects to be invoked with the name of a game that a user wishes to play. This is done by creating symbolic links to dm, in the directory /usr/games for all of the regulated games. The actual binaries for these games should be placed in a ``hidden'' directory, /usr/games/hide, that may only be accessed by the dm program. dm determines if the requested game is available and, if so, runs it. The file /etc/dm.conf controls the conditions under which games may be run. The file /etc/nogames may be used to ``turn off'' game playing. If the file exists, no game playing is allowed; the contents of the file will be displayed to any user requesting a game. FILES
/etc/dm.conf configuration file /etc/nogames turns off game playing /usr/games/hide directory of ``real'' binaries /var/log/games.log game logging file SEE ALSO
dm.conf(5) HISTORY
The dm command appeared in 4.3BSD-Tahoe. SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
Two issues result from dm running the games setgid ``games''. First, all games that allow users to run UNIX commands should carefully set both the real and effective group ids immediately before executing those commands. Probably more important is that dm never be setgid any- thing but ``games'' so that compromising a game will result only in the user's ability to play games at will. Secondly, games which previ- ously had no reason to run setgid and which accessed user files may have to be modified. BSD
May 31, 1993 BSD
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 09:46 AM.
Unix & Linux Forums Content Copyright 1993-2022. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy