I was just trying to work out howto give all my users (ie: me) the permissions to use my sound card, so that when i startx i dont get some dsp errors. and i came across something like this quite a bit:

Also you will want to chmod 666 /dev/dsp* /dev/mixer* so other users have permissions for sound besides root.

this is really stupid, but i have to find out somehow, why 666 ??? I have read a bit about, but its a bit confusing and vague! i realise that 666 is derived from adding up the permissions ie:read write and so on (400, 200 etc)

but can anyone explain exaclty what permissions are given here? and their corresponding numeric values?

also why is numeric form used here rather than symbolic? is there a general rule of thumb of when to use either symbolic or numeric?

cheers

let us assume that the user for this system is "najm" - with this in mind we will go through three steps.




1. open an xterm window
2. type the letters "su" and then hit the enter key. you will get a prompt for the root password. type in your root password and hit the enter key.
3. type this:

adduser najm audio


and hit the enter key


///////////////

log out then log in again.

Well there is no rule of choosing octal or "symbolic" form of setting permissions, well, I use octal b/c it makes easier for me to get perms right, I don't know maybe a+r u-w isn't appealing to my eye, and I really struggle sometimes to get the idea when I see that sort of chmod directive.
If you search here there was quite a discussion with explanation of different sets of permissions, basically there are three access rights within three groups, these are owner, group, and others and the actual permissions are read, write and execute, also there are special sets of permissions like sticky bit, set uid (user id), and set gid (group id), the former is used on your /tmp directory where all the users are have read/write access, but only the owner and root only have rights to delete their own stuff; the later two are used when you usually as a sysadmin'd like to give users more air but limit them from use of su which gives up root's password, or you have different groups on your system and you need to have some way to give rights to members to have access to certain files that belong to different group/user but not in its turn to give everything away, so you set up set uid and set gid bits. Example of it is /bin/su.

4 = read permission
2 = write permission
1 = execute permission

owner : group : everyone
000 : 00 : 0

just add the permissions
so:

666 = read (4) + write (2) for owner,group and everybody. When you ls -l it would look like:
-rw-rw-rw-

755 would be:
read (4) + write (2) + execute (1) owner
read (4) + execute (1) group and everyone
When you ls -l it would look like:
-rwx-r-xr-x

754 would be:
read (4) + write (2) + execute (1) owner
read (4) + execute (1) group
read (4) everyone
When you ls -l it would look like:
-rwxr-x--x

etc etc.....

nice one guys!! no i have it all sussed thanks for taking your time to explain to me