chmod recursion -- files only

Risc91 · 07-23-2004, 02:17 PM

Is there a way to change the permissions on all the files below a given directory? I thought it was as simple as:

chmod -R 444 /usr/lib/whatever/*.ext

but this is changing the permissions on everything below the given driectory, including and directories.

TIA

zorba4 · 07-23-2004, 02:45 PM

"find . -type f -print | xargs chmod 444 "shoud work, isn't it ?
If not, find . -print >myfile.sh
and vi myfile.sh removing the directories (they should not be soo many), and then
1,$s/^/chmod 444/
and sh myfile.sh.
I know, the vi way is not very clever, but it works without thinking more than two seconds, so why not ?

Risc91 · 07-23-2004, 03:20 PM

good call. Thanks for the help!

zorba4 · 07-23-2004, 05:00 PM

You're welcome

crabboy · 07-23-2004, 11:09 PM

The first find should work w/o vi.

Code:

find /usr/lib/whatever -type f -name '*.ext' -exec chmod 444 {} \;

diederick76 · 07-22-2007, 05:12 AM

If your files contain spaces, backslashes, etc., do this instead:

find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 444

unclecameron · 06-20-2008, 04:16 PM

also, if you need to change the permissions on the folder instead of the files, try this

Code:

find . -type d -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 755

obiwahn · 09-14-2010, 07:17 PM

Code:

find /usr/lib/whatever -type f -name '*.ext' -exec chmod 444 '{}' \;

crabboy · 09-16-2010, 10:12 AM

Using xargs is usually much quicker as it does not have to execute chmod for every file.

David the H. · 09-16-2010, 11:11 AM

I'm not sure if it's available everywhere, but on some versions of find at least you can replace the final semicolon with a plus sign, in which case it will act in a way similar to xargs. That is, it will run only one or a few instances of the command, with all the files from find built into a single argument.

Code:

find /usr/lib/whatever -type f -name '*.ext' -exec chmod 444 '{}' \+

I couldn't find anything that definitively showed that aix find has it, but this generic "unix" man page lists it as an option. gnu find also has it, of course.

(What the heck? I just noticed that this thread is over 6 years old!)

crabboy · 09-16-2010, 01:07 PM

Great tip David, learn something new every day. I just tried it on AIX 5.3 and it works, it does not work on AIX 5.1

4rapiddev · 06-28-2011, 02:04 PM

Thank you.