Chflags Command

Hi anastasi

Welcome to Apple Discussions!!

The 'sunlnk' flag can only be set by the super-user, root. I would advise against using it, since you can only unset it in Single User Mode.

Since you are the owner of the file, why don't you use the 'uunlnk' flag?

Dangerous, very dangerous. Messing with flags can do weird things (the schg flag is the worst in the matter)...

By the way the sunlnk flag prevents even the root user from deleting the file. You have first to change (if you can, that is, cf Michael's message) it using chflags nosunlnk before being able to delete the file...

You should sudo it or even su to be able to be able to change the sunlnk flag. Look at man chflags...

Ruby

I have tried the uunlnk flag too and i get the invalid flag message.

Well I don't know why that would be since you are the owner. But it is interesting that although CHFLAGS(1) lists 'uunlnk and 'sunlnk', CHFLAGS(2) does not list these. This is strange since the man page for chflags(1) is newer than that for chflags(2).

I need a difficult way to delete myfile.

Well if there are other 'admin' users on your machine, this is nigh impossible. But if the other users do not have admin privileges, just make sure the file is in a directory to which no-one else has write access. To prevent them overwriting or deleting the content of the file, again make sure they don't have write access, this time to the file.

(If 'uunlnk' didn't work, did you try 'uunlink', which is also supposed to work?)

It seems the uunlink option does not work. It is not even present in the source code of the function used to parse the command line of chflags (i.e. fflagstostr(...))

When the user (un)locks a file using the finder, it is the uchg flag that is (un)set. Would it do the trick?

Frank

It is not even present in the source code

I can't find that option anywhere in my books (including a FreeBSD tome) or in any FreeBSD man page, except for the OS X man page in section 1.

I thought of suggesting a simple lock, ie 'uchg' but that is trivial for another admin user to change. If there are no other admin users though, what I suggested should work (and doesn't need any effort since the permissions I suggested are the default for things in, e.g. your Home/Documents folder.

Frank

Correction. It is in the FreeBSD man pages, both section 1 and section 2.

Don't know how I missed it before, unless I went to a less up-to-date site (or maybe I was looking at Darwin). I must remember to check the man pages in 10.3 or 10.2 next time I boot to them!

Interesting, it is as if there was an intention to add this facility into Darwin 8.2 and that it did not get all the way: chflags being more or less ready, strtofflags (inside libc) being in an older state. It could also be the opposite: an attempt to removal that didn't go all the way. I'd love to know what happened...

Frank

It could also be the opposite: an attempt to removal

That was the reason for my mention of 10.2 and 10.3 man pages 🙂

Given the nature of the other flags, this would seem to be a sensible addition, though, so your first idea is probably right!