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Import from cypat.guide: docs/linux/prohibited_files/intermediate_prohibited_files.md

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Author(s): Matthias Lee (ml2322) <br /> Last Updated: 07-07-2025

{| class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed wikitable" style="width:100%"
! Recommended Prerequisites (click to expand)
|-
|

<li>Introductory Prohibited Files</li>
|}

=== More efficient strategies to find prohibited files ===

==== find ====

The <code>find</code> command is a powerful tool to search the system for files matching certain criteria. To find prohibited files with it, we can use the <code>-name</code> argument to search for all files with a specific extension. To do this, we can use a wildcard like <code>-name "*.mp3"</code> to find everything that ends in <code>.mp3</code>. However, we still need to tell <code>find</code> where to look. For example, to search for all MP3 files in <code>/home</code>, the command would be <code>find /home -name "*.mp3"</code>. NOTE: <code>*</code> is a special character in bash, so you need to put it in quotes.

<syntaxhighlight lang="text">user@system:/home/user$ sudo find /home -name "*.wav"
/home/jacob/Audio/heyy_john.wav</syntaxhighlight>
Additionally, prohibited files may not always be in the user home directories. Therefore, it's useful to search other directories or even the whole system sometimes (replace <code>/home</code> with <code>/</code> for the whole system, or some other directory). However, the more broad the search, the longer it will take, and the more false positives you will get.

=== Remediating protected prohibited files ===

Prohibited files may sometimes have restrictive permissions to prevent you from deleting them.

==== Taking ownership of the file ====

A good first step to delete a file is to take ownership of it with the <code>chown</code> command. For several files, you can use a wildcard to target them all at once. You specify <code>user:user</code>, as you change the user ownership and group ownership to yourself.

<syntaxhighlight lang="text">user@system:/home/user$ sudo chown user:user *.mp3</syntaxhighlight>
==== Setting permissions ====

The next step to take control of a file is to enable write permissions on it, with <code>chmod</code>. We will change the permissions to <code>775</code> to ensure we are able to delete it.

<syntaxhighlight lang="text">user@system:/home/user$ sudo chmod 775 *.mp3</syntaxhighlight>
==== Changing attributes ====

If the above two methods didn't enable you to delete the file, the final thing to try is to remove the immutable and append only attributes with <code>chattr</code>.

<syntaxhighlight lang="text">user@system:/home/user$ sudo chattr -ia *.mp3</syntaxhighlight>
====== Further Reading ======

* https://commandmasters.com/commands/chattr-linux/
* https://www.howtogeek.com/437958/how-to-use-the-chmod-command-on-linux/

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