How to set access rights to a symlink?

Question

linux

There is a file that lies in /etc/vendorname/file.txt - which is periodically regenerated, with owner root:root. Can I somehow make a symlink to it for a non-root user of the system, so that it would be available to him?
I tried this as a user:

sudo ln -s /etc/vendorname/file.txt ./file.txt
sudo chown -h user:user ./file.txt
cat file.txt
cat: file.txt: Permission denied

Answer 1

What's the difference who owns the file, it's important what level of access to it. Most likely, the /etc/vendorname folder or the file itself is closed for reading (for example, chmod 700 or 600)
In order for everyone to read this file, you need to do it from under root (from under the user user there will not be enough privileges)
chmod a+r /etc/ vendorname
chmod a+r /etc/vendorname/file.txt
Then the user will be able to make a symlink. If you cannot allow everyone to see this file, then you need to add the user user to the root group. And allow the group to read this file via g + r. If this file is regenerated, then it is possible that the privileges will be lost every time, and the program that creates this file will need to be changed.

Answer 2

And what's the problem with giving read permissions to /etc/vendorname/file.txt? Like rw-r--r--?

Answer 3

You can give the user permission to interact with this particular file using sudo.