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I have a very large and deep directory. I would like to make all of it read only. The problem is I guess I have to distinguish between files (which will get a=r) and directories (which will get a=rx).

How can I do that?

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  • 1
    I just found this: chmod a=rX which solves my problem. From the man: (X) execute/search only if the file is a directory or already has execute permission for some user
    – David B
    Oct 5, 2010 at 8:00
  • If that's intended to be an answer then it should be in an answer.
    – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
    Oct 5, 2010 at 8:07

4 Answers 4

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18

I just found this: chmod a=rX which solves my problem. From the man: (X) execute/search only if the file is a directory or already has execute permission for some user.

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8

  1. chmod accepts mode X, which only sets x to directories. a=X

  2. You can also just remove the write permission: a-w

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    +1 for option #2, the most logical way
    – Matteo Riva
    Oct 5, 2010 at 8:56
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    +1 for option 2 also, but -0.5 for misunderstanding what capital X means in chmod
    – Doug Harris
    Oct 5, 2010 at 11:30
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The suggestions above did not work for me, all folders were set read-only.
A colleague gave me this, which works:

find . -type f -exec chmod a-w {} \;
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find somepath \( -type f -exec chmod a=r {} \; \) -o \( -type d -exec chmod a=rx {} \; \)
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