File Permissions - Ubuntu Server

Daniel Mons daniel.mons at iinet.net.au
Tue Aug 12 00:51:29 BST 2008


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Simon Ives wrote:
| I'm running Ubuntu Server 8.04 and I need to change the permissions for
| a large quantity of files and directories.
|
| I've got a directory named 'music' that I share with the home network.
| This includes other Linux boxes that access this directory via nfs and
| some Windows XP boxes accessing it via samba.  I've just transferred
| around 80gb of music files and directories from a Windows drive and I
| need a command to alter the permissions of all the files as read/write
| for everyone.

The best way is to properly integrate your authentication systems, or at
the very least ensure that user accounts that exist on the Windows
machines also exist on the Linux machines and within Samba with the same
passwords. i.e.: your windows username/password is also added to Linux
via the "useradd" and "passwd" commands, and to Samba via the "smbpasswd
- -a" command.

Failing that, go to the directory in question, and type:

chmod -R a+rwX /directoryname

I should note that this is highly frowned upon by Linux sysadmins (which
I am one). Opening up world access to your file system is a poor
substitute for properly configuring your services and authentication.

What the above command does is recursively add read and write
permissions for all (User, Group and Other).  Additionally, the upper
case X adds "execute" permissions to directories ONLY.  In order to
actually enter/use a directory, execute permissions must be enabled on it.

Whatever you do, DO NOT run "chmod -R 777 /dirname".  This will also
clobber standard files with the execute permission, making any plain
file executable.  This has potentially dire consequences should someone
try to run one of them.

|
| Further, is there a way that I can set all newly created directories and
| files within this particular directory to inherit the file permissions
| of the parent directory?

In your smb.conf on a per-share basis, set the "create mask" and
"directory mask" options as needed.  In your case, "create mask = 0666"
and "directory mask = 0777" will ensure all files and directories are
created with the correct permissions (again, I would hope you
investigate matching up your user accounts instead, and set these to
0640 and 0750 respectively).

"man smb.conf" for more help on your Samba configuration, and more
detailed explanations on all of the above.

- -Dan
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