On Wednesday 10 October 2007 13:04, Andrew Sackville-West wrote: > On Tue, Oct 09, 2007 at 05:25:17PM -0700, tom arnall wrote: > > Well, I got a list of perm's for stuff in /dev (from a sarge system. I'm > > on etch). There were only two diff's: two sound devices. But there are > > lots of insane permissions throughout the rest of the system. Is this > > because when I did 'chmod -R 777 /dev' I also in effect did 'chmod -R 777 > > /dev/hda1'? But when I do 'ls -R /dev/hda1' I get only '/dev/hda1'. Why > > the diff' in the scope of the commands? And where do you read about this > > kind of thing? > > well, ls and chmod are different utilities, so the -R could easily have > different effects despite having apparently the same function. > > I seem to recall once I did a chown -R something and it followed the > /. and /.. links in the directory so that it started walking up the > directory tree. luckily I stopped it. Perhaps chmod -R is doing a > similar thing? > > A
That does /not/ happen with any utility's -R. They don't walk up the tree with ../ , it would be way too dangerous to have any utility work that way. Think about it. Below are some exampoles using * and even .* to prove it (it's a little hard to read with line wrapping): amethyst:/tmp# mkdir -p test/1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/0/1/2/3/4 amethyst:/tmp# ls -l test total 0 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 72 2007-10-11 12:56 1 amethyst:/tmp# ls -l test total 0 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 72 2007-10-11 12:56 1 amethyst:/tmp# ls -ld test drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 72 2007-10-11 12:57 test amethyst:/tmp# ls -ld test/ drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 72 2007-10-11 12:57 test/ amethyst:/tmp# ls -ld test/1/ drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 72 2007-10-11 12:56 test/1/ amethyst:/tmp# cd test/1/2/3/4/ amethyst:/tmp/test/1/2/3/4# ls -l total 0 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 72 2007-10-11 12:56 5 amethyst:/tmp/test/1/2/3/4# chown -R jw * amethyst:/tmp/test/1/2/3/4# ls -l total 0 drwxr-xr-x 3 jw root 72 2007-10-11 12:56 5 amethyst:/tmp/test/1/2/3/4# ls -ld . drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 72 2007-10-11 12:56 . amethyst:/tmp/test/1/2/3/4# ls -lA total 0 drwxr-xr-x 3 jw root 72 2007-10-11 12:56 5 amethyst:/tmp/test/1/2/3/4# ls -la total 0 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 72 2007-10-11 12:56 . drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 72 2007-10-11 12:56 .. drwxr-xr-x 3 jw root 72 2007-10-11 12:56 5 amethyst:/tmp/test/1/2/3/4# chown -R fred .* amethyst:/tmp/test/1/2/3/4# ls -l total 0 drwxr-xr-x 3 fred root 72 2007-10-11 12:56 5 amethyst:/tmp/test/1/2/3/4# ls -ld . drwxr-xr-x 3 fred root 72 2007-10-11 12:56 . The only way for a recursive run to get back up higher in the tree is following a symlink (which is certainly a realistic possibility). JW -- ---------------------- System Administrator - Cedar Creek Software http://www.cedarcreeksoftware.com http://jwadmin.blogspot.com/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]