[vox-tech] Permissions mysteriously changed

[Bill Kendrick]

On Tue, Aug 17, 2004 at 01:58:45PM -0700, Richard Crawford wrote:
> A user came to me today and told me that he was unable to open or edit a
> couple of his files.  I went in to look and saw that the permissions on
> the files in question were set to 000, so that the directory entry looked
> like this:
> 
> ---------- 1 joe webdev 152 Aug 13 15:27 img1.jpg
> ---------- 1 joe webdev 152 Aug 13 15:28 img2.jpg
> 
> I went ahead and reset the permissions to 766 but I'm puzzled as to what
> could have caused this change to happen in the first place.

Err, shouldn't that be "644" or "664" for these files?

766 would mean:

  Owner: Read/Write/Exec
  Group: Read/Write
  Other: Read/Write

Exec doesn't make much sense for a JPEG.  And Read/Write for Other is
probably not a good idea.  For Group, it depends on if others in 'webdev'
want to be able to edit the file (which I'm guessing is true).


I'd also check the permissions of the directories these files are in
("ls -ld .")

Sensible permissions would be 755, 775, 700, or 770, depending on the
situation.  (The first two make sense for stuff you want people to see
over the web, so that your webserver process can read them.  The second
two make sense for more private stuff.  And, as before, the group permissions
depend on the situation, and the group ownership of the file/dir in question.)

Hope I'm not telling you a bunch of junk you already know, simply due to
a typo, or something. ;)


Good luck!

-bill!