Hi, I messed up my images folder and now I can't view any files in it.

I did this as root

chmod -R 777 /home/smokey/images

But xv wont work when I try to launch pictures inside of it. What is the correct permissions so that I can view it and not make it an "executable", what do I type? as root or normal user?

hi ,

i think that should be : chmod 660......etc ( rw-rw---- )

egag

Directory should be 755
Individual picture files should be 744
and it should be set to chown "username":users for directory and files.

Close, but not quite.

The individual picture files should be 644

The 3 digits refer to the permissions for the owner of the file, all users in the same group as the owner, and finally all other users. Each digit is obtained by adding the following:

1 for executable permission
2 for write permission
4 for read permission

So, if you don't want your pictures to be executable then you set it to 6 for the owner, which allows the owner to (4) read the file, plus (2) write the file. You set it to 4 for other users in the same group, and 4 for all other users to allow them to only read the file.

The permissions are slightly different for directories, so you have to make directories executable (in a sense) in order to allow the owner and others to browse within them. This means that you'll have to set the permissions for the files within each directory with the following command:

chmod 644 * (assuming there are no other files in the directory which should be executable)

Rather than using the '-R' flag from the parent directory.

In addition there are other properties which can be set through the permissions, but these aren't really relevant to this discussion, so I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader ;-)

Enjoy!
--- Cerbere

[edit] Granting write permission implies permission to edit or delete the file or directory. [/edit]

you can also chmod like this

chmod o=rwx or g=rwx or o=rwx

o = owner
g = users
o = others

rwx meaning goes quite for itself i think

Close, but it is like this :

chmod u=rwx or g=rwx or o=rwx or a=rwx

u = user who owns the file
g = users in the same group as the file
o = other users
a = ugo together

You can also use + and - :

chmod a+x filename will make a file executable for everybody