Linux Desktop Hacks

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Chapter 9, Administration and Automation

#80 Protect Yourself from Windows Applications

HACK

This hack requires several steps:

1. Install

sudo, if you don’t already have it installed.

2. Create a user and a group named

jail.

3. Install Wine or CrossOver Office as the user

jail in the /home/jail

directory.

4. Create the /home/jail/Documents directory, and give everyone read/write

access to the directory.

5. Set up the sudoers file to enable you to run certain applications as the

jail user.

6. Install a special script in /usr/local/bin that automatically uses Microsoft

Word, running in the jailed environment, to open any Word document

in read-only mode.

Get Your Safe Environment Set Up

Create both a user and a group named jail. Make the jail user a member

of the

jail group, but do not add this user to any other groups. You want

the

jail user to have as few privileges as possible. Your Linux distribution

probably includes a graphical application to manage users and groups. If

you prefer to use the command line, one way to create this user is to log in

as root and issue the following commands:

# groupadd jail

# useradd jail -d /home/jail -m -g jail -s /bin/bash

# passwd jail

New UNIX password: <password>

Retype new UNIX password: <password>

passwd: password updated successfully

Though you are providing a password, you will configure

sudo such that users do not need to enter the password to use

the

jail account to ...