Very Computer

I have set up a restricted shell account to allow users across the
company to edit a specific file. Fortunately this account does not need
any special privileges above being able to write to this file. However
using vi as the editor means that while the user is logged on they can
still load up other files to at least read.

Is there an alternative editor to vi that can be "signalled" to
exclusively edit a file and thus restrict a user to editing that file?
Can vi do this? My reading of the man pages suggested it cannot.

Thanks for your help.

Russell.
--

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: Mobile Radio Division   :  Phone:      +64 3 358 6662 :
: Tait Electronics Ltd    :                             :

I don't know what you need this for, but wouldn't you be better taking a
different approach?

Giving people across the company a chance to edit a file would not stop more
than one person editing it at the same time, and the file contents would then
not reflect all the edits done.

How about a wrapper - depends if the users just add text to the file, or
actually edit it.  I'm sure you could knock up a quick script to input text and
append it to the file, or use sed (in the script) to make changes the user
wants.

It's a bit difficult when we don't know how the file is used, but hope this
helps.

--

Best Regards,

Brian Craigie

Unix Sys Admin

My views are not necessarily those of my employers...

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