Virtual Private Server User Guide

Internet and UNIX Basics

chmod a+r *.pub

This gives all users permission to read files with the ".pub" extension.

Example 5: Changing permissions on a file you don t own:

To change the permissions on a file you don t own, use the vchmod super 

command (Remember, only users who are members of the sysadmin group can 

use the vchmod command):

vchmod o x members.only

This removes execute permissions for other users on the file "members.only".

For More Information:

For more information on file permissions and how to set them, please refer to the 

chmod man page by entering the following command at the command prompt:

> man chmod

Changing File and Directory Ownership

Users can modify the owner and group of files or directories that they own by 

using the chown command. Regular users cannot modify the ownership of files or 

directories that they do not own. Members of the sysadmin group, however, can 

use the vchown super command to modify the owner and group of files and 

directories that are owned by other users, except for those owned by the user 

root. The root user can use the chown command to change the ownership of any 

file. 

Examples of changing the ownership of files are given below.

Example 1: Changing ownership of a file with chown

In this example, assume that your username is jdoe and that you are changing the 

ownership on the following file, which is currently owned by you:

 rw r       1 jdoe  jdoe  0 Jan 21 07:28 mailing.list

To change the group of this file so that it belongs to the mailadmin group, you can 

use the following command:

> chown jdoe:mailadmin mailing.list

You can verify the new ownership by issuing the ll command. The group 

ownership should now reflect  mailadmin  for the file, as shown below:

 rw r       1 jdoe  mailadmin  0 Jan 21 07:28 mailing.list

Example 2: Changing ownership of file owned by someone else

Recall that users who are members of the sysadmin group can modify ownership 

of files owned by anyone except the root user. Suppose you are a member of the 

sysadmin group and need to take ownership of the following file, which is owned 

by the user sally and the group acme.com:

Technical Training Department

August 2004

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