On 22/09/2025 06:55, Mahish Sivan S (Nokia) via GNU coreutils Bug Reports wrote:
Hello coreutils team,I would like to suggest an improvement to the "CHMOD" utility in GNU coreutils. Current behaviour: ----------------------- The chmod command allows us to change file permissions. However, in the current implementation, it does not support granting permissions for a specific time period. Suggestion for improvement: ----------------------------------- Introduce a new time flag (for example, `-t`) that accepts a duration in minutes. With this option, users could grant permissions to a file for a specific time period instead of permanently. Once the specified time expires, the file's permissions would automatically revert to their default state. Example (if possible): -------------------------- $ chmod 777 -t 30 myfile.txt # Grants full access to "myfile.txt" for 30 minutes # After 30 minutes, permissions revert to their previous state Ex : Current: $ls -al -r--r--r-- 1 user user 1.1G Sep 18 10:20 file.iso $ chmod 777 file.iso -rwxrwxrwx 1 user user 1.1G Sep 18 10:20 file.iso Proposed with `-t`: $ chmod 777 -t 15 file.iso -rwxrwxrwx 1 user user 1.2G Sep 18 10:20 file.iso After 15 min -r--r--r-- 1 user user 1.2G Sep 18 10:20 file.iso Rationale: ------------ This feature would be useful in scenarios where temporary access needs to be granted, such as: - Allowing a colleague or process to access a file for a short duration - Enhancing security by automatically revoking access after the required time window - Reducing the risk of leaving sensitive files over-exposed due to forgotten manual permission changes Environment: ---------------- - OS/Distribution: Ubuntu 22.04 - Coreutils version: cmod (GNU coreutils) 9.1 Thank you for maintaining coreutils and considering this suggestion.
I'm not sure this is a good idea (what about reboots). In any case it would be best achieved with a tool/script driving the existing functions/utilities rather than with the utilities themselves. thanks, Padraig
