File protection with chmodchmod 400 file - To protect a file against accidental overwriting.
chmod 500 directory - To protect yourself from accidentally removing, renaming or moving files from this directory.
chmod 600 file - A private file only changeable by the user who entered this command.
chmod 644 file - A publicly readable file that can only be changed by the issuing user.
chmod 660 file - Users belonging to your group can change this file, others don't have any access to it at all.
chmod 700 file - Protects a file against any access from other users, while the issuing user still has full access.
chmod 755 directory - For files that should be readable and executable by others, but only changeable by the issuing user.
chmod 775 file - Standard file sharing mode for a group.
chmod 777 file - Everybody can do everything to this file.
Logging on to another groupWhen you type
id on the command line, you get a list of all the groups that you can possibly belong to. When initially connecting to a Gentoo system, a user will normally belong to the
users group (the primary group for most users). To create new files that will belong to the groups other than the group
users, a user can use the
newgrp command to log into any of these groups. For example, to create files that are owned by the group
audio, type:
$ newgrp audio
without having to use
chgrp.
Sticky bit modeWhen applied to a directory, it means a user can only change files in this directory when s/he is the user owner of the file or when the file has appropriate permissions. This feature is used on directories like
/var/tmp, that have to be accessible for everyone, but where it is not appropriate for users to change or delete each other's data. The sticky bit is indicated by a
t at the end of the file permission field:
$ ls -ld /var/tmp
drwxrwxrwt 9 root root 280 Aug 1 16:58 /var/tmp
The sticky bit is set using the command
chmod o+t directory.
SGID (set group ID) on a directoryThis is the standard way of sharing files in UNIX. Every file created in the directory will have the same group owner as the directory itself (while normal behavior would be that new files are owned by the users who create them). This way, users don't need to worry about file ownership when sharing directories:
$ mkdir ~/music
$ chgrp audio ~/music
$ chmod 775 ~/music
This will enable other users who belong to the
audio group to write to the directory. But the files created will belong to the
users group instead of the
audio group. The solution is to set the SGID bit and all files subsequently placed there will have the group id of the directory automatically:
$ chmod g+s ~/music
Note: Files that are being moved to an SGID directory but were created elsewhere keep their original user and group owner.