Understanding Access Rights

[znx]

Understanding Access Permissions

Using file/directory permissions can be a little bit tricky when you come from the Microsoft world. At some points I will say "root" or more correctly UID 0, these things are the same.

 

Main Utilities:

chmod - Change access permissions of files

chown - Change file owner and group

 

And for more experienced users:

stat - Display file or filesystem status

 

The access rights determine if a process can access a file in a particular method. These rights specify read, write and execute and are further controlled by user, group and other.

 

Quick glance at how file permissions look:

Code:

znx@loud $ ls -l file
-rw-r-----  1 znx users 0 Aug 28 01:37 file

 

Taking each bit as it goes:

 

-

This represents the file type, file (-) and directory (d) are all you need right now,

there are more but it will just confuse matters.

 

rw-

The first three indicate the permissions for the file owner (znx), read