okie.... this file permissions thing is starting to bug me. first - am i correct that a directory must be executable for it to be opened? i have linux/windows duel boot. i am a writer & photographer & right now i have a whole bunch of word processor files & image files on a fat32 drive called "data" as in /mnt/data. so, i copyed from data to my home. i believe i used the command cp -R /mnt/data /home/skippi or something like that. result was, i ended up with /home/skippi/data and in that directory was everything on the fat32 drive "data" problem. i couldn't rename or delete anything. i noticed that all these files were owned by root. why???? so i did chown skippi -R data ok, now they all say skippi owns them. i did then chmod 666 -R data now a file shows something like this when doing ls -l -rw-rw-rw- 10 skippi skippi 71034 Oct 24 19:222 file_name first question, what does the "10" mean? now at this point, as skippi, i could not enter any of these directories, but as root i could. why???? then i did chmod 766 -R data now, as skippi i can enter the directories, but now all the files are marked as executables, which they are not. arrgghhhhh help explinations please my linux book explains chmod & chown pretty well as far as switches go, but assumes that one knows everything else. =) evidently i am missing some important information. oh, and how 'bout this. when i am skippi and i save a file to a fat32 drive, it becomes owned by root. why??? thanks much all next question coming soon Adrian Smith 'de telepone dude Telecom Dept. x 7042 [EMAIL PROTECTED]