Re: deny deleting a file for users

> > However this is a horrible kludge. I suggest that you take good backups

For normal files, I'd suggest this. However since it's a mail spool the poster was worried about, I imagine that the software uses the standard 'open new file, write out emails that we still want, remove original, rename new file to old file name' method. Using a hardlink to the original you will have a good copy of today's mail spool, but it'll be the exact same file months/years later because the real mail spool keeps being recreated.

Now if that's not the case (say the program writes a temp file and then writes the temp file back over the original file, such that the original file inode has never changed) then using hardlinks will be an excellent solution.

--
Brian Hatch                  How to generate a sendmail.cf:
   Systems and                1) pick up phone while using modem
   Security Engineer          2) sneeze into phone
http://www.ifokr.org/bri/     3) copy resulting line noise to
                                 /etc/sendmail.cf
Every message PGP signed