Question

15

.nano_history permissions error

rated 0 times [ 15] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 17011 / 3 Years ago, wed, october 20, 2021, 7:39:24

I use rkhunter and I was wanting to check its logs with:

nano /var/log/rkhunter.log

But nano outputted this error:

Error reading /home/arthur-dent/.nano_history: Permission denied



Press Enter to continue starting nano.

And if I press ENTER I am able to view the file. I have checked the permissions for that file and they are now:

-rw-------   1 root        root           12 May  3 20:26 .nano_history

So I guess that I just change ownership back to me? But as I was literally just using nano, why would the permissions and ownership (possibly, as I do not know what the original ownership was) just suddenly change? Was it because I was just using it with sudo, if so, it is odd as nothing like this has ever happend before and I use sudo with it a lot?

OS Information:

Description:    Ubuntu 15.04

Release:    15.04

Package Information:

nano:

  Installed: 2.2.6-3

  Candidate: 2.2.6-3

  Version table:

 *** 2.2.6-3 0

        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ vivid/main amd64 Packages

        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

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wenceslockro

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1 Year ago

answered 3 Years ago fertion · Accepted Answer

This is possible if .nano_history does not exist and you edit any file as root. Start a search action with Ctrl+W and .nano_history has the wrong ownership.

sudo chown arthur-dent:arthur-dent /home/arthur-dent/.nano_history

Later, the ownership of the file will not be changed.

I've tested:

% ls -l .nano_history

ls: cannot access .nano_history: No such file or directory



% sudo nano ~/tmp/<any_file>

Ctrl+W

Search anything.

Ctrl+X

% ls -l .nano_history

-rw------- 1 root root 6 Mai  3 22:08 .nano_history



% sudo chown aboettger:aboettger .nano_history

% ls -l .nano_history                    

-rw------- 1 aboettger aboettger 6 Mai  3 22:08 .nano_history



% sudo nano ~/tmp/<any_file>

Ctrl+W

Search anything.

Ctrl+X

% ls -l .nano_history  

-rw------- 1 aboettger aboettger 11 Mai  3 22:11 .nano_history