Friend asks: I would like to make an app to ask for authentication before launching. I can do that on MacOS via creating an encrypted disc image and put the app in there, and windows has robust third party tools for it. But how would you go about it on Linux, especially since it’s a .deb (that gets auto-updated all the time via its repo) and not an appimage/flatpak? Others need access to the user account, but I want to restrict that one app. Creating a different user account for it is out of the question btw, since you can still change the password for that user via the primary admin account. Also, I don’t want to be running full VMs that take forever to boot to use that one app. Is there any simple way to lock an app under Linux?
It’s Linux, on the local machine the root account is always going to be able to do things.
Not if you have an encypted folder etc, with a different password than the user account. That way, is safe even from the root account. The problem here is that the app is a .deb, it doesn’t come as an appimage, and it needs constant updating too. So it’s the main system executable file that I want to make user-authenticating, with a different password than that of the user account.