chmod

chmod [OPTION]... MODE[,MODE]... FILE...
chmod [OPTION]... OCTAL-MODE FILE...
chmod [OPTION]... --reference=RFILE FILE...

Change the mode of each FILE to MODE. With –reference, change the mode of each FILE to that of RFILE.

Options

--help

Print help information.

--changes, -c

like verbose but report only when a change is made

--quiet, --silent, -f

suppress most error messages

--verbose, -v

output a diagnostic for every file processed

--no-preserve-root

do not treat ‘/’ specially (the default)

--preserve-root

fail to operate recursively on ‘/’

--recursive, -R

change files and directories recursively

--reference

use RFILE’s mode instead of MODE values

-H

if a command line argument is a symbolic link to a directory, traverse it

-L

traverse every symbolic link to a directory encountered

-P

do not traverse any symbolic links (default)

--dereference

affect the referent of each symbolic link (this is the default), rather than the symbolic link itself

--no-dereference, -h

affect symbolic links instead of any referenced file (useful only on systems that can change the ownership of a symlink)

Each MODE is of the form [ugoa]*(-+=)+|[-+=]?[0-7]+.

Examples

Give the [u]ser who owns a file the right to e[x]ecute it:

chmod u+x {{path/to/file}}

Give the [u]ser rights to [r]ead and [w]rite to a file/directory:

chmod u+rw {{path/to/file_or_directory}}

Remove e[x]ecutable rights from the [g]roup:

chmod g-x {{path/to/file}}

Give [a]ll users rights to [r]ead and e[x]ecute:

chmod a+rx {{path/to/file}}

Give [o]thers (not in the file owner’s group) the same rights as the [g]roup:

chmod o=g {{path/to/file}}

Remove all rights from [o]thers:

chmod o= {{path/to/file}}

Change permissions recursively giving [g]roup and [o]thers the ability to [w]rite:

chmod {{[-R|--recursive]}} g+w,o+w {{path/to/directory}}

Recursively give [a]ll users [r]ead permissions to files. Also give e[X]ecute permissions to files that have at least one execution permission and to all sub-directories:

chmod {{[-R|--recursive]}} a+rX {{path/to/directory}}

The examples are provided by the tldr-pages project under the CC BY 4.0 License.

Please note that, as uutils is a work in progress, some examples might fail.