figured I'd forward this to the list there a lot of people who may benifit from the discussion :) -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: permissions From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Hi, > > I know how to apply group / world permission, > but e.g. can I do a chmod 700 to /etc/passwd ? > and it'll works? I mean what is the underlying > structure of the permissions? each of those 3 digits is for the ugo, the first digit, the 7 in your example is for the user(the owner) the second it the owning group, then the third is others, to get the number for each 'place': 4 - read 2 - write 1 - execute you pick which of these options that you want that perso/group/others to have,then add up the ones you want, so that 700 you used as an examle, would be 4+2+1 = 7 the owner had read write and execute rights on that file, since you were refering to /etc/passwd (which btw if you do set this file chmod 700 you will not be able to log in to your pc) and it's not a shell script or executable, so it would not require 700, merly 600, (note that /etc/passwd must be chmod 644 or at least **4 so that it is readable by all users who log in to the machine.) *note* binary(compiled) programs need only the execute bit (1) while scripts need read(4) and execute(1) (5) to be executed also note that on directories, the execute bit les the user execute or cd to that dir, while the read bit allows a user to ls within that dir and view the contents some common combinations are: 755 - user executables (scripts) 711 - user executables (binaries) 644 - world readable documents writable by the owner 600 - documents readable and writableonly by the owner 1777 -this is a special permission that is used on directors like /tmp /var/spool/mail and some others, the extra 1 at the begining, is called the sticky bit, it means that anyone can create files in this folder, but only the owner can delete the file that they created. -- Free linux help on #linux @ irc.axenet.org http://www.axenet.org/chatnow/chat.php?channel=linux - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
