Permissions and stuff

[Sulley]

Dumb newbie here again... How do permissions and rights work in Linux? I prolly should by a book but I'll try here first. I am very Windows literate but I don't know jack about Linux.

[dvdnut]

ahem yeh you should be reading a book,

not being sarcy but linux for dummies is a good start and thinking in a windows frame of mind isnt.

it is easier to learn if you dont think of linux in windows terms i feel.

basically if you havent been given the right to somewhere or something like a directory or a file you aint going to do jack with it, except maybe read it if you are lucky.

you have 3 types of permissions and 3 types of access
yourself, a group and everyone else
and the 3 types are
read,write,execute
i cant remember how the figures for changing permissions are worked out but i know how to use them.

you will see when you to a ls -l on a directory some sort of lettering next to the filename and/or directory with stuff like

--rwx---rw--rw, or something along those lines and it read
you have read/write acces/ the group you are akin to have read/write and everyone else who is not in your group has read/write.

if you have something which you and only you want to access and do stuff you change it to something along the lines of

--rwx---------- so no one else can do what you can.

hope this has explained a bit, but if you want more may be linuxdoc.org has something i aint sure.

hth

toodle pip. :D

[chimaybleue]

To change permission on a file (or a folder), you must use chmod in CL (read the man page) or you can just right-click on the file with kfm (if you use KDE) and go to 'properties' ...