chmod question
 

I have moved a boatload (6 gig) of installation files to a linux box and it appears that after untaring some of the lower level directories and files do not give permissions to "others". The files were moved by a non-root id. Perhaps my ftp settings had an affect on this. I have not attempted installation yet, but wanted to avoid a disaster.

SLES 9 KDE permissions recursion does not appear to work, so I have some questions about chmod.

Assume all of my many install directories and files are under one directory: bigdir
The install needs to be executed by root.

1. is root considered an "other" to a common id, or is it special and can do everything anyway?

2. This may be overkill, but if I need to change the dir to help root, would it be:

chmod -R 777 bigdir

Note: I do not want to change the idea of whether a particular file is executable, just change who can execute it.

Another assumption here is that no installation was ever screwed up by making intentionally readonly files editable.

thanks for your ideas,
tongar

As root, how about:

chmod -R o+wr bigdir

?
That should make every file and directory under bigdir readable and writable by 'other'. I think. :) Try on a small subsection of your files first, just to be sure.

Re: chmod question
 

That command would allow everyone full control over the bigdir and all it's child objects.