Linux File Permissions Explained

2011-07-19
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3 min read

Because Linux is intended to be a multi-user system, there has to be a way of controlling access to a different files by different users.

For example, you don’t want to have just any user messing around with your configuration files. Only the root should be able to do that. This is (on a Linux box) accomplished by file permissions.

How does it work?

Access permissions are stored along with each and every file on your computer. How are they represented? Well, let’s have a look, you’ve probably already stumbled upon them at some point…

drwxr-xr-x -r-w-rwrw- -rwxr--r--

Something like this shows up when you try writing ls -l command. This string tells you, what access permission are on the file. It can be divided into 4 groups.

  1. Character 0 - this one shows file type
  2. Characters 1-3 - permissions for user (owner of the file)
  3. Characters 4-6 - permissions for group (group that owns the file)
  4. Characters 7-9 - permissions for others (none of the above)

The first character can be any of these:

  • - = regular file
  • d = directory
  • l = symbolic link
  • s = Unix domain socket
  • p = named pipe
  • c = character device file
  • b = block device file

The next nine characters show the file’s permissions, divided into three groups, each consisting of three characters. The first group of three characters shows the read, write, and execute permissions for user, the owner of the file. The next group shows the read, write, and execute permissions for the group of the file. Similarly, the last group of three characters shows the permissions for other, everyone else. In each group, the first character means the read permission, the second one write permission, and the third one execute permission.

The characters are pretty easy to remember:

  • r = read permission
  • w = write permission
  • x = execute permission
  • - = without permission

Changing permissions

If you want to change file’s permissions, you can use command chmod. There are two ways of using chmod, one with letters (the aliases mentioned above) and the other with numbers. I’ll go through the second method, because it’s faster once you know what’s going on and the first method is pretty self-explanatory.

 $ chmod 775 ~/my/file

This will change permissions of ~/my/file to -rwxrwxr-x . So what do the numbers mean?

  • 4 = read (r)
  • 2 = write (w)
  • 1 = execute (x)
  • 0 = no permission (-)

To get the permission bits you want, you add up the numbers accordingly. For example, the rwx permissions would be 4+2+1=7, rx would be 4+1=5, and rw would be 4+2=6. Because you set separate permissions for the owner, group, and others, you’ll need a three-digit number representing the permissions of all these groups.

Changing file ownership

The other thing you might want to do is change the owner and the group of the file. There are two commands - chown for changing owner (and group) and chgrp for changing group.

Using both are pretty straight-forward. If in doubt, don’t hesitate to check the man pages!

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