A user can belong to several groups A file can belong to only one user and one group at a time A particular user, the superuser “root” has extra privileges (uid = “0” in /etc/passwd) Only root can change the ownership of a file In GUI: Applications System Settings Users and Groups Users and Groups cont.
User information in /etc/passwd
Password info is in /etc/shadow Group information is in /etc/group /etc/passwd and /etc/group divide data fields using “:” /etc/passwd: joeuser:x:1000:1000:Joe User,,,:/home/joeuser:/bin/bash
/etc/group: joeuser:x:1000: /etc/passwd File
/etc/passwd Holds user account info
Included fields are: 1. Login name (user name) 2. Password type 3. User Id (uid) 4. Group Id (gid) 5. General Comment about the user 6. Home Directory 7. Shell /etc/passwd File A program in detail
When we type: ls -l /usr/bin/top We'll see: -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 68524 2011-12-19 07:18 /usr/bin/top
| | | | | | | | | | | | | File Name | | | | | | | | | | | +--- Modification Time/Date | | | | | | | | | +------------- Size (in bytes | | | | | | | +----------------------- Group | | | | | +-------------------------------- Owner | | | +-------------------------------------- “link count” | +---------------------------------------------- File Permissions Group The name of the group that has permissions in addition to the file's owner. Owner The name of the user who owns the file. File Permissions The first character is the type of file. A "-" indicates a regular (ordinary) file. A "d” indicate a directory. Second set of 3 characters represent the read, write, and execution rights of the file's owner. Next 3 represent the rights of the file's group, and the final 3 represent the rights granted to everybody else.
(Example modified from http://www.linuxcommand.org/lts0030.php)
Some special cases
When looking at the output from “ls -l” in the
first column you might see: d = directory - = regular file l = symbolic link s = Unix domain socket p = named pipe c = character device file b = block device file File permissions
There are two ways to set permissions when
using the chmod command: Symbolic mode: testfile has permissions of -r--r--r-- U G O* $ chmod g+x testfile ==> -r--r-xr-- $ chmod u+wx testfile ==> -rwxr-xr-- $ chmod ug-x testfile ==> -rw--r--r-- U=user, G=group, O=other (world) File permissions cont.
Absolute mode: We use octal (base eight) values represented like this: Letter Permission Value R read 4 W write 2 X execute 1 - none 0
For each column, User, Group or Other you can set
values from 0 to 7. Here is what each means: 0= --- 1= --x 2= -w- 3= -wx 4= r-- 5= r-x 6= rw- 7= rwx File permissions cont.
Numeric mode cont:
Example index.html file with typical permission values: $ chmod 755 index.html $ ls -l index.html -rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 0 May 24 06:20 index.html
$ chmod 644 index.html
$ ls -l index.html -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 0 May 24 06:20 index.html
