Changing file ownership for security reasions

[mintybarrels]

Hi...

Here is a previous thread I'd like clarification on.

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 sudo find ~/ -user root

What does this do?

~/ (tilde slash) The tilde (~) is a Linux "shortcut" to denote a user's home directory. Thus tilde slash (~/) is the beginning of a path to a file or directory below the user's home directory. To my knowledge, The command means to find or search in your user home directory and find root files that for some reason was in there. (Most of the time these root files are from other apps that was installed by the user)

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    sudo chown -Rc $USER:$USER $HOME

This command changes the ownership of the output of the previous command from root to your User.


My question is... where is says $USER, should this be my $'username', the same one my home folder is named after?

Tx

MB

[Pjotr]

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sudo chown -Rc $USER:$USER $HOME

This command changes the ownership of the output of the previous command from root to your User.


My question is... where is says $USER, should this be my $'username', the same one my home folder is named after?

No. Just use the command "as is". Don't change a thing.

[Cosmo.]

Most of the time these root files are from other apps that was installed by the user

No. This happens, if sudo gets used with graphical programs. A typical mistake.

[mintybarrels]

So, is this a command I should run regularly, after say, installing new programs from the software center?

I was under the impression that new programs/apps downloaded would live on the / directory?

This as I noticed it was an anomaly that autocpu-freq lived in my home folder.

Is that where it is supposed to live?

MB

[Cosmo.]

I told you, where the wrong ownership comes from. This answers your question.

[Midnight True]

So, is this a command I should run regularly, after say, installing new programs from the software center?

to my experience No, this only occurs via manual installation of the user. Typically via github or gitlab if the developer did not package the app as app image or flatpak or snap. But running it every installation would be a good security practice in my opinion.

I was under the impression that new programs/apps downloaded would live on the / directory?

Yes indeed, please try this in the terminal

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whereis auto-cpufreq

though the binaries/dependencies resides on wherever folder you extracted it

This as I noticed it was an anomaly that autocpu-freq lived in my home folder.

Is that where it is supposed to live?

MB

i use auto-cpufreq too and it lives too in my /home, so far i have not encountered any problem except the manual finding of update for the app.

[AndyMH]

My question is... where is says $USER, should this be my $'username', the same one my home folder is named after?

USER is an environment variable that contains your username, $ means the contents of. Try echo $USER in a terminal to see.

[mikeflan]

I was under the impression that new programs/apps downloaded would live on the / directory?

Everything in Linux lives in the / directory, including your home directory.
/ is the truest form of root - the mother of all roots