017,
Permissions are grouped in 3 parts, each with 3 settings. The first "dash" on the permissions list deals with the type of file (directory, block-special, link, etc.) .. don't worry about that.
The rest of the permissions, in groups of 3, refer to the owner, group, world in that order. So permissions of
-rwxrw-r--
mean
rwx ... the owner has full permissions on the file
rw- ... the group has read/write permissions
r-- ... all other users have read permission
Each group of three permissions can also be specified in Octal notation ...
[tt]
4 2 1 4 2 1 4 2 1
- r w x r w - r - -
[/tt]
So the octal notation for this would be 764, i.e. owner has full permission (4+2+1), group has read/write permission (4+2), others only have read permission (4)
You can use this notation in the chmod command, so if you wanted to change a file to the above permissions, all you need to do is
chmod 764 filename
Hope this helps a bit!
Greg.
