I've SSH'ed into my webhost. I've restored a website backup and need to reset all permissions for the files and folders there. I figured out how to change all file permissions, but I cannot figure out how to target only folders. Can it be done?

This is what I used for changing all file permissions: (executed from the homedir)

You can target folder only using find. eg.

Here is an AskUbuntu thread with some more examples and more detailed explanations: https://askubuntu.com/questions/7675...-for-a-website

That would change the permissions on folders (directories) to...and prevented them from being readable...
From the homedir
See man find

Although I have to ask. If you're working with a restored backup of the website, why do you need to reset permissions?

This is helpful, thank you very much =)


I'm glad I posted that code here then. Good to know!


This did the trick. Thank you very much!


Cpanel has a "Backup" section. I performed a Full Backup but when I restore it the permissions for files are all over the place. They are not how they were set when I backed it up.

When I manually upload the files from the backup Full Backup generated, via FTP, they do have the correct permissions. However, I have different problems with that route. When I try to upload files via Filezilla FTP Client, I am repeatedly told that the file already exists, and what I want to do about it? Sometimes the file has a real file size, other times the file size is 0 bytes.

No idea why this is happening and this is not normal behavior for interacting with my website. If I tell it to overwrite all files it encounters, it will finish with 115 files failed. Upon checking, none of these files exist on the server. If I tell it to re-queue the files on the Failed list, it tells me that not all files could be re-queued and it clears the Failed file list.

This isn't normal behavior for Filezilla, so I'm not too worried about investigating it further right now. So I turn back to Cpanel. I am unable to upload these files using File Manager in Cpanel, as it will only allow me to upload a single file at a time. That is inefficient, tedious, and time consuming. So that leaves me with only the Cpanel backup restore tools which were responsible for assigning the incorrect permissions.

I sought out SSH approach to try tackling the file permissions at a faster rate than Cpanel's File Manger allowed me.

What did you use to perform the backup? Most backup software can preserve file/directory permissions and restore them during a restore.

HTH...

Cpanel has a "Backup" section. Within that section you can make a "Full Backup", as well as restore a backup. When I restore the Full Backup I made there, the permissions for files are all over the place. They are not how they were set when I backed it up. This method is temporary. I had planned to setup a cron job to do the backing up, but had not gotten around to it. Something happened, and I had no choice but to restore a backup made using Cpanel.

After this experience I set out to find how to create the cron job to create backups. I came across this article, which provides the following solution:

Files Backup Cron Job
Database Backup Cron Job

Why not simply use "chmod -R +X ." after setting all to 644?

I was not aware of this. I am very new to Linux and the command line. I looked this up and it looks awesome. I will definitely use this in the future. Thank you

because that would make everything 755

it was bad advice, don't use it unless you really want to set everything executable

1 members found this post helpful.

It is a valid command, however doing any command and not understanding the impact of it is what I'd consider to be a bad situation. To be clear, I concur with the cautious advice here.

@Mulsimine,

What you really need to understand is how file and directory privileges work and what the chmod command does with them, as well as other "ch" commands you may encounter.

I do feel that understanding the number 755 or variations of that, and what they mean, such as rwxrwxrwx translates to read/write/execute permissions for: owner, group, and world is important. Yes you can use +X, +W, or +R, and also - for each of those, along with some others, and you also can use the numbers. You can perform the command recursively using the -R argument. But you really should understand what impact it is going to have on your files when you do this.

I think you should look at some chmod tutorials on the web. I found a few with that search string, and recommend you review some of them to understand just exactly what file permissions is all about, versus entering recommended commands by LQ users. The recommendations may be valid, they may help you now, but if you do not understand how they helped you, this would seem to be a problem I'd be more concerned about.

1 members found this post helpful.

Mulsimine, you can look at the Wikipedia article about file permissions under the "Numeric notation" heading. It's also known as "octal notation", and it's easier than you might think. Basically a "4" is equal to "read permission", a "2" is equal to "write permission", with a "1" being equal to "execute permission". So "600" would give the owning user of said file both "read" and "write" permissions. Why? Because what's 4 + 2 ? 6.

Here's a quick example;