Linux: Set permission only to directories

Question

I have to change the permissions of the htdocs directory in apache to a certain group and with certain read/write/execute.

The directories need to have 775 permissions and the files need to have 664.

If I do a recursive 664 to the htdocs, then all files and directories will change to 664.

I don't want to change the directories manually.

Is there any way to change only files or directories?

Solution 1

Use find's -type option to limit actions to files and directories. Use the -o option to specify alternate actions for different types, so you only have to run find once, rather than separately for each type.

find htdocs -type f -exec chmod 664 {} + -o -type d -exec chmod 775 {} +

Solution 2

chmod can actually do this itself; the X symbolic permission means "execute, if it makes sense" which generally means on directories but not files. So, you can use:

chmod -R u=rwX,go=rX /path/to/htdocs

The only potential problem is that if any of the plain files already have execute set, chmod assumes it's intentional and keeps it. If this is a potential problem and you have the GNU version of chmod (i.e. you're on Linux), you can get it to remove any stray execute permissions like this:

chmod -R a-x,u=rwX,go=rX /path/to/htdocs

Unfortunately, this trick doesn't work with the bsd (/macOS) version of chmod (I'm not sure about other versions). This is because the bsd version applies the X permission based on "the original (unmodified) mode", i.e. whether it had any execute bits before the a-x modification was done (see the man page).

Solution 3

Use find to search for directories and apply chmod on them:

find -type d | xargs chmod 775

Use type f for file:

find -type f | xargs chmod 775

Solution 4

Gordon's answer above is correct, but if you're trying to lock down access to a directory tree, it leaves scripts that are executable to the owner also executable to whoever has been granted the capital X.

Using

find <path> -type d -exec chmod 775 {} +

or

find <path> -type d -exec chmod 755 {} +

is safer.

Solution 5

I use something similar to the solution provided by Gordon:

chmod -R ug=rw,o=r,a+X /path/to/folder/

It should always set 775 for folders and 664 for files, even if the execute permission was previosly set for some file

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