I have just upgraded an Ubuntu server and during the upgrade, I decided to keep all old versions of .conf files instead of replacing them with the upgraded package versions. Now, I have to go and manually merge the new files (*.conf.dpkg-dist) with the original files (*.conf). My strategy to do so was to mount the servers root filesystem via SFTP on my local Mac and use a MacOS Gui Visual Diff merger tool like Meld to merge the old files with the new files directly on MacOS.
This sounds great in concept, but the problem is, that when I SFTP into my server on my Mac, I am only able to navigate directory's above the login users home directory, preventing me from accessing any files or folder in / such as the /etc folder. In other words, if I sftp login as "my-non-root-user-with-sudo-privilages", I can only access /home/my-non-root-user-with-sudo-privilages/* directory and above. I cannot access just /home or /etc.
Same case goes if I log in as "root" with sftp. I can only see the /root/* directory and any directory/file above /root/ but not below it. So again, logging in as "root" gives me access to everything in the /root folder and above, but I cannot go down to the / directory or navigate to the /etc directory even as root user.
My question is, (on macos) when SFTP logging into an Ubuntu Server as either "my-non-root-user-with-sudo-privilages" or "root", how can I navigate to restricted directories below the corresponding user's home folders, such as the /etc folder?
