Linux file privileges

Question

How can I check and set who can view or open a given folder or file?

Janne Pikkarainen · Answer 1 · 2010-07-31 16:59:22Z

To check:

ls -l /path/to/folder/or/file

or for more verbose output:

stat /path/to/folder/or/file

To change owner:

chown someuser:somegroup /path/to/folder/or/file

To change permissions:

chmod 755 /path/to/folder/or/file

man chown and man chmod will give you explanation about the various options.

Or, if you are using some graphical environment, such as Gnome, you can just right-click the files/folders and set the permissions there.

EDIT: Changed file -> stat. Thanks for correction!

This suffices 99% of the time. The other 1% of the time (when access control lists are in use) you need getfacl filename.
Marius: And for the 0.01% of the time (when SELinux security contexts are in use) you need to use -Z flag for various commands, such as ls, to see the SELinux flags.
file doesn't show anything about permissions. Perhaps you meant stat. Also, some people find symbolic permissions to be more intuitive: chmod u+x,g=rx,o-w abc or chmod ugo=r abc

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