[clue-tech] ext3 and immutable symlink?

[Jim Ockers]

Hi CLUEbies,

I want to replace a normal file in a directory with a symlink to 
somewhere else.  I also want this change to be permanent and immutable; 
that is, I want nothing and nobody to be able to get rid of the symlink 
and rewrite it with a normal file.  Unfortunately it seems that chattr 
on ext{23} will not let me make a symlink be an immutable part of a 
directory entry.

$ touch oldfile
$ ln -s oldfile newfile
$ ls -al newfile
lrwxrwxrwx    1 ockers   ockers          7 Mar 31 13:54 newfile -> oldfile
$ chattr +i newfile
chattr: Operation not permitted while setting flags on newfile

I've tried this a bunch of times on a variety of systems.  Sometimes it 
applies the chattr attribute to the oldfile, sometimes it just throws an 
error, on CentOS too.  Can anyone suggest a reliable way to make my 
symlink itself immutable without having chattr try to apply the change 
in attributes to the target of the symlink?

I can't make the directory itself immutable because that will break too 
many things I think.

Thanks,
Jim

-- 
Jim Ockers, P.Eng. (ockers at ockers.net)
Contact info: http://www.ockers.ca/pason.html


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