[Cialug] Can someone translate for me?

[Don Ellis]

On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 10:40 AM, Tim Wilson <tim_linux at wilson-home.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 8:24 AM, Theron Conrey <theron at conrey.org> wrote:
>>
>> actually the first command changes who can do what with the file.
>> for the first command a quicky explanation is there are three groups.  the
>> owner, the group, and then everyone else.
>> basically changing the permissions to 777 allows EVERYONE (owner, group,
>> and everyone) to do everything (read,write, execute) to that file.

...

> And FWIW, I agree, 777 is usually overkill, and bad!  If you're used to the
> octet method, a much safer route is 755 (read/write/execute for you,
> read/execute for everyone else).  Or if you don't want anyone else to do
> anything with the file, use 700.

No one has said anything about why you should set execute permission
on a tar file, for anyone, owner, group, or other.

No need whatsoever, and probably a bad idea. What if someone tried to
execute the tar file, either deliberately or accidentally? What if it
isn't really a tar file, but something executable?

So, if you do for some reason want to change permissions on the tar
file (which shouldn't be necessary in most cases), the most you should
need is 'chmod u+r' -- here the symbolic version is a lot easier than
the hex version, though there are a lot of nice options in the man
page that weren't there the first time I read it.

--Don Ellis