Folders must be made executable?

[Eric Dunbar]

On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 20:55:35 -0500, David Miller <justdave at bugzilla.org> wrote:
> Kent Frazier wrote:
> > I recently reinstalled Ubuntu from the Hoary Array 2 disc and almost
> > everything worked fine.  I ran into a rather strange issue with some
> > of the subdirectories in my home directory.  When I would open them in
<snip>
> > from the command line with ls (as normal user) it tells me permission
> > is denied.  By experimenting, I found I could make them work properly
> > by setting the executable bit, which was off for those that were
> > misbehaving.
> 
> That's the way it's supposed to work.  On a directory, the executable
> bit actually means "permission to enter this directory".  If it's
> readable, but not executable, then you can see what files are in it, but
> you can't enter the directory, and hence can't open the files in it.
> 
> Conversely, it's possible to make a "blind" directory by setting it as
> executable, but not readable.  Now you can enter the directory, but you
<snip>
> But you have no way to tell it's there if you didn't already know the
> filename.

Dave, this is the most readable description of *nix permission I have
ever seen. Has anyone ever found a primer describing *nix permissions
in such a logical and approachable manner? Whenever I read 'man' pages
on the subject my eyes glaze over b/c they're not exactly written for
people who don't *already* know what's going on ;).

Sincerely, Eric.