Understanding Linux File Permissions (Part 1)

Linux File Permissions

Running the ls -l command on your terminal shows a similar output like so:

This output forms the very basis of permissions(mode) for files and directories.

Read. Write. Execute.

Three characters that we’ll be seeing a lot are r, w and x which mean read, write and execute permissions respectively. Whenever we refer to permissions, we’d be using the combination of these three letters to describe it.

Some Examples

• rwx means Read, Write and Execute permissions are granted on the resource.
• r-x means Read and Execute permissions.
• -w- means only Write permission.

From the earlier output, we inspect drwxr-xr-x. This is divided into 4 parts

1. The type of resource; - for a file, l for a symbolic link and d for a directory. Here it’s a directory.
2. The permissions for the user (owner of the file). rwx: Read, Write and Execute.
3. The permissions for members of the file’s group. r-x: Read and Execute.
4. The permissions available to all users. r-x: Read and Execute.

Note that order of the output would always be like this.

Changing Permissions

Permissions are also called modes. Hence the command used for changing permissions is called chmod which is short for change mode.

The format for changing permissions is:

chmod mode file

There are two notations for specifying the mode:

1. Symbolic Notation
2. Numeric Notation

Symbolic Notation

To set permissions using symbolic notation, run:

chmod mode file

The mode here is a combination of the User Category, Operator and Permission.

• User Category: The category which permissions are to be altered. The options include:

  1. u : user
  2. g : group
  3. o : other
  4. a : all

• Operator: Used to alter permissions: They include:

  1. • : Add permission
  2. • : Remove permission
  3. = : Set permission
• Permission: The permissions. rwx

Examples

Say we have a file named der;

Example	Description
chmod g+w der	Add write permission to the files group
chmod u-wr der	Remove write and read for user
chmod u+rwx,g-w der	Add all for user and remove write for group
chmod a=wr der	Set all to write and read only
chmod o= der	Set others to ---

Numeric Notation

Let’s start by representing the value for off with 0 and on with 1. The table below shows the relationship betweeen the binary representation and string representation of permissions.

Binary Representation	String Representation
0	---
1	—x
10	-w-
11	-wx
100	r—
101	r-x
110	rw-
111	rwx

To get a Numeric value that we can use with the chmod command, we convert the binary representation to base 10 or decimal. Hence:

Binary Representation	Octal Representation
0	0
1	1
10	2
11	3
100	4
101	5
110	6
111	7

A quick way to remember this is to know that READ is 4, WRITE is 2 and EXECUTE is 1. Then to get the permission all you have to do is add the values for all 3.

Say I want to give a file read and write permissions, that’ll be 4 + 2 = 6.

Note that 0 means no read, write and execute permissions.

Numeric Notation	Symbolic Notation
000	----------
700	-rwx-------
755	-rwxr-xr-x
644	-rw-r—r—
766	-rwxrw-rw-
660	-rw-rw----
400	-r--------

So to change the permissions using this, use chmod 700 der e.t.c