File permissions in Linux

What are file permissions?

In Linux, file permissions, attributes, and ownership control the access level that the system processes and users have to files. This ensures that only authorized users and processes can access specific files and directories.

To find out what permissions exist for files & folders in the current directory, do ls -la after the user prompt in the terminal. It is represented by the first ten characters that shows for each file/folder present in the directory.

Example file permissions in current directory

 user$ ls -la
 -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 2203 Jul 23 23:26 foo.py

Permisssion types #

There are three permission types:

1. read(r)
2. write(w)
3. execute(x)

User-based permission groups #

The first ten characters at the beginning of the output in the terminal can be broken down into the following

1. file type - represented by the zeroth character.
2. owner - represented in the first 3 characters. The Owner permissions apply only to the owner of the file or directory, and will not impact the actions of other users.
3. group - represented in the middle 3 characters. The Group permissions apply only to the group that has been assigned to the file or directory, and will not affect the actions of other users.
4. all users - represented in the last 3 characters. The All Users permissions apply to all other users on the system, and this is the permission group that you want to watch the most.

We can say that the owner of the file (in this case, it’s user) foo.py has read (r) and write (w) permissions, and the group and the rest of users have only read (r) permissions.

Changing file permissions with chmod #

By using chmod we can change the file permissions to let a user-based permission group have specific access(read/write/execute) to the file.

The chmod command usage takes the following arguments

  chmod  <groups to assign the permissions><permissions to assign/remove> <file/folder names>

Groups to assign the permissions can be specified using the following flags

1. u - owner
2. g - group
3. o - others
4. a - all users. For all users, it can also be left blank

Let us look at few examples of chmod

Example of permission change to a file #

Adding group’s write permission to the file foo.py

 user$ ls -la
 -rwxr-xr-x  1 user user 2203 Jul 23 23:26 foo.py
 user$ chmod g+w foo.py
 user$ ls -la
 -rwxrwxr-x  1 user user 2203 Jul 23 23:26 foo.py

Another example of permission change #

Removing group’s and others’ execute permission to foo.py

 user$ ls -la
 -rwxrwxr-x 1 user user 2203 Jul 23 23:26 foo.py
 user$ chmod go-x foo.py
 user$ ls -la
 -rwxrw-r-- 1 user user 2203 Jul 23 23:26 foo.py

Setting chmod file permissions using Binary References #

Another method in which you can modify the permissions of a file using chmod is via binary references which can be described as follows.

The whole string stating the permissions (rwxrwxrwx) is substituted by 3 numbers. The first number represents the Owner permission(u); the second represents the Group permissions(g); and the last number represents the permissions for all other users(o).

The permission types have assigned values and the sum of the combinations is taken as permissions for each user-based permission group.

• r = 4 # read
• w = 2 # write
• x = 1 # execute

Example for permission change using Binary Reference #

Assign to the foo.py file the following permissions:

• Owner: Read, Write and Execute
• Group: Read and Execute
• All others: Read and Execute

Calculating the user-based permission groups values:

Owner: r+w+x = 4+2+1 = 7
Group: r+x = 4+0+1 = 5
All others: r+x = 4+0+1 = 5

 user$ ls -la
 -rwxrw-r-- 1 user user 2257 Jul 12 01:23 foo.py
 user$ chmod 755 foo.py
 user$ ls -la
 -rwxr-xr-x 1 user user 2257 Jul 12 01:23 foo.py