Others’ Permissions

The last three letters in the permissions column tell us what everyone else in the world, the “others” may do.

-rwxr-x r-x  joe  acctg  archive.sh 
-rw-rw- r--  joe  acctg  orgchart.gif
-rw-rw- r--  joe  acctg  personnel.txt
-rw-r-- r--  joe  acctg  publicity.html
drwxrwx r-x  joe  acctg  sales
-rw-r-- ---  joe  acctg  topsecret.inf
-rwxr-x r-x  joe  acctg  wordmatic

The “others” lead highly restricted lives. They can’t write any files or directories, and they have absolutely no access to the topsecret.inf file.

They may still run the archive.sh script and the wordmatic program, and they may search the sales directory.

However, things are not as we should like.

• We don’t want anyone outside our group to execute archive.sh (although they can read it to learn how to write a good shell script).
• We want to restrict topsecret.inf so that it’s closed off to everyone except user Joe.
• We also want to deny access to the sales directory to outsiders.
• Finally, the publicity.html file contains press releases, and it should be open to anyone in the company to change.

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