lfs-book/chapter05/changingowner.xml

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<sect1 id="ch-tools-changingowner">
  <?dbhtml filename="changingowner.html"?>

  <title>Changing Ownership</title>

  <note>
    <para>The commands in the remainder of this book must be performed while
    logged in as user <systemitem class="username">root</systemitem> and no
    longer as user <systemitem class="username">lfs</systemitem>. Also, double
    check that <envar>$LFS</envar> is set in <systemitem
    class="username">root</systemitem>'s environment.</para>
  </note>

  <para>Currently, the whole directory hierarchy in <filename
  class="directory">$LFS</filename>
  is owned by the user <systemitem class="username">lfs</systemitem>, a user
  that exists only on the host system. If the directories under <filename
  class="directory">$LFS</filename> are kept as they are, the files are
  owned by a user ID without a corresponding account. This is dangerous because
  a user account created later could get this same user ID and would own all
  the files under <filename class="directory">$LFS</filename>, thus exposing
  these files to possible malicious manipulation.</para>

  <para>To avoid this issue, you could add the <systemitem
  class="username">lfs</systemitem> user to the new LFS system later when
  creating the <filename>/etc/passwd</filename> file, taking care to assign it
  the same user and group IDs as on the host system. Better yet, change the
  ownership of the <filename class="directory">$LFS/*</filename> directories to
  user <systemitem class="username">root</systemitem> by running the following
  command:</para>

<screen><userinput>chown -R root:root $LFS/{usr,lib,var,etc,bin,sbin,lib64,tools}</userinput></screen>

</sect1>