Changing permissions

[Nigel Ridley]

D. Michael McIntyre wrote:
> On Saturday 21 July 2007, Dotan Cohen wrote:
>> You don't want to format that thing ext2/3. It won't be useable in
>> WindBlows anymore, and thus the portability of the device is rather
>> compromised. I suppose that you could tar files that you must keep
>> permissions for.
> 
> You can do it if you never intend to use the stick with anything that isn't 
> Linux though.  I expect.  I haven't actually done it, but I used to format 
> floppies for Linux.  It should work.
> 
>> Note that I think that it is unusual that the execute bit would be set
>> on files from an insecure device such as a USB stick. I haven't
>> checked what this machine, does, though. Can someone verify their
>> machine's behaviour?
> 
> The execute bit is set on *everything* by default, because there are no 
> permissions in VFAT, and in order for the directories to be readable, they 
> have to be executable.  Since there isn't any way to have fine-grained 
> control without per-file permissions (you have to set up *one* set of fake 
> permissions that are used for everything on the mounted VFAT filesystem) 
> there isn't really a good way around this problem.  That's why the default is 
> usually to use 777 on everything.
> 
> If you've copied something from a VFAT source that's a 777 (rwxrwxrwx) mess, 
> you can probably fix it with something like this ($directory is the path to 
> whatever directory in question, like /home/foo/junk_I_copied_from_Winderz or 
> whatever):
> 
>     find $directory -type f|xargs chmod 640
>     find $directory -type d|xargs chmod 750
> 
> (Or use 644 and 755.  I keep more restrictive permissions than are the default 
> on most Linux systems.)
> 
> That will find all the files, then all the directories, respectively, and 
> reassign more appropriate permissions to them.  That's probably sufficient 
> for most situations, I think, though I didn't actually set up a test scenario 
> and play with any of this for real.  I could be spouting nonsense about this 
> 777 thing, since it looks like none of the pictures I've copied off of my 
> memory cards have weird permissions.  Oh well, if I go on record babbling a 
> torrent of bullshit because I think I'm such an all-knowing genius that I 
> don't have to bother fact checking before writing a treatise on a particular 
> subject, then it won't be the first time.  At least I'm honest with myself, 
> eh?  :D

Your pretty much a genius - except you should have done your test first as there 
was a typo:
find $directory -type f|xargs chmod 640
find $directory -type d|xargs chmod 750

Needed to remove the '$' before the 'directory'
But after I removed the offending '$' it worked very well :-) Thank you

Blessings,

Nigel

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