How do file permissions apply to symlinks?

Question

Let's say you have this structure:

+ directory
-- file1
-- file2
-- file3 -> /tmp/file3

file3 is a link to another file3 somewhere else on the system.

Now let's say I chmod 777 the directory and all contents inside it. Does my file3 in /tmp receive those permissions? Also, let's say we have the same situation but reversed.

/tmp/file3 -> /directory/file3

If I apply the permissions on the file being linked to, how does that effect the link?

Answer 1

It depends on how you call chmod.

From man chmod:

chmod never changes the permissions of symbolic links; the chmod system call cannot change their permissions. This is not a problem since the permissions of symbolic links are never used. However, for each symbolic link listed on the command line, chmod changes the permissions of the pointed-to file. In contrast, chmod ignores symbolic links encountered during recursive directory traversals.

So, if in the first case you run chmod -R 777 directory to recursively change the permissions, the link target will not be affected, but if you do chmod 777 directory/*, it will.

If you change the permissions on the link target directly, those permissions will carry through (since as man page and baraboom say, the actual link permissions aren't used for anything).

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Test log for illustration:

$ mkdir dir && touch dir/file{1,2} /tmp/file3 && ln -s {/tmp,dir}/file3
$ ls -l dir/* /tmp/file3
-rw-r--r-- 1 user group  0 2011-06-27 22:02 /tmp/file3
-rw-r--r-- 1 user group  0 2011-06-27 22:02 dir/file1
-rw-r--r-- 1 user group  0 2011-06-27 22:02 dir/file2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 user group 10 2011-06-27 22:02 dir/file3 -> /tmp/file3

$ chmod -R 777 dir && ls -l dir/* /tmp/file3
-rw-r--r-- 1 user group  0 2011-06-27 22:02 /tmp/file3
-rwxrwxrwx 1 user group  0 2011-06-27 22:02 dir/file1
-rwxrwxrwx 1 user group  0 2011-06-27 22:02 dir/file2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 user group 10 2011-06-27 22:02 dir/file3 -> /tmp/file3

$ chmod 700 dir/* && ls -l dir/* /tmp/file3
-rwx------ 1 user group  0 2011-06-27 22:02 /tmp/file3
-rwx------ 1 user group  0 2011-06-27 22:02 dir/file1
-rwx------ 1 user group  0 2011-06-27 22:02 dir/file2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 user group 10 2011-06-27 22:02 dir/file3 -> /tmp/file3

Answer 2

Permissions only affect the file, not the symlink.