this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
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I removed my permissions on my downloads folder using chmod.

can anyone help restore back to default?

Thanks!

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[–] eager_eagle 72 points 10 months ago (2 children)

sudo chmod 755 ~/Downloads

assuming you don't need a recursive solution for subdirectories

[–] bitchkat 8 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Sudo is completely unnecessary here. If the owner changed, use chown first reset the user. Then use chmod to change permissions.

[–] Another_username 3 points 10 months ago

You’re correct…sudo wasn’t necessary

[–] eager_eagle 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

that's probably right, though sudo will work every time

[–] dohpaz42 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You should only use elevated privileges only when you need to. Otherwise you risk catastrophic failure.

[–] WhyAUsername_1 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

No I did not use "sudo rm -rf /*". How did you know?

[–] bushvin 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Dude! That’s just plain wrong!

If you wanter do remove the French language packs, you should have run

sudo rm -fr /*
[–] youngGoku 1 points 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (2 children)

-R to recurse. Good for chmod and chown

[–] eager_eagle 11 points 10 months ago (2 children)

useful for chown, less so for chmod: I almost never want my dirs and files with the same permissions, and I made this mistake a few times.

find dir -type f -exec chmod 644 -- {} +
find dir -type d -exec chmod 755 -- {} +
[–] toynbee 3 points 10 months ago

If all you need is to restore read permissions, you could use symbolic rather than octal:

chmod -R a+r $DIR

If you don't want to grant read permissions to everyone you can replace the a with whichever applies of ugo for user, group or other.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

Go over it with a second chmod -R but with -X to add execute but only to directories

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Don't give all your files execution permissions.

chmod 644 -R Downloads
chmod +x Downloads
[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

That's the same as 755, except you are only setting execute on the folder?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Why would you want execute on anything but the folder?

[–] mvirts 43 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I love everything about this screenshot

[–] [email protected] 59 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The non proportional font on terminal 🤌

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I think they should use Comic Sans instead.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

Webdings

Pretend you're using Ancient Aliens tech

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Aptos Mono if you want to feel conflicted

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That one's at least still fixed width

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

As long as it's fixed width it's a blessing to me.

[–] Another_username 33 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Thanks y’all! chmod 755 worked! Back to drwxr-xr-x

[–] RegalPotoo 33 points 10 months ago

A quick guide to explain what is going on here, and what the numbers mean: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DaMLUoGXUAI21V6.jpg:large

[–] [email protected] 26 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Tip: you can also use chmod u+rwx,g+rx,o+rx etc to add permissions

With the initial letters corresponding to "user", "group" and "other", and (r)was, (w)rite, e(x)ecute for the rest.

In the case of directories, x specifies access to files/etc within the directly (read just let's you see them)

You can also use i.e "o-rw" etc etc to remove existing permissions

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If you use X instead of x it'll add execution permission to directories without making files executable.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Oh yeah I forgot to mention that. It's important when using wildcards or recursive permissions!

[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I was weirded out by the 12288 filesize. If anyone else is wondering.

So used to seeing 4096 lol

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Huh, I thought it's a file, but I saw it's a dir. What's up with that odd value?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

So how i understood from the link it's that in those 4k all file names in that directory are stored. That space can grow if necessary but won't shrink automatically. So i assume that op has alot of files in that directory

[–] Another_username 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I do have a lot of files in that directory…but music has more files and taking more space. Strange…

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

My reading was it wasn't based purely on number of files, but metadata related to files and stuff (idk what that is in ext4, but movies tend to be large and complex related to music). it's probably irrelevant because that's still a really small number on a modern hard drive.

[–] Another_username 3 points 10 months ago

Ahh yeah, that makes sense. Thanks for sharing the info!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

I believe directories contain pointers to the nodes under them, so they get bigger with lots of things in them.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If OP did it recursively they would also need -R

[–] bitchkat 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You don't necessarily want to set files to 755. So I recommend

find Downloads -type d -exec chmod 755 {} ;

[–] somethingsomethingidk 3 points 10 months ago

Your escape didn't show up because of markdown. Use backticks to enclose commands

find Downloads -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;

[–] AnUnusualRelic 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] WhyAUsername_1 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)
chmod 644 -R Downloads
chmod +x Downloads

Your welcome

Edit: I just copied the permissions on the other folders

[–] Another_username 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Downloads should be drwxr-x- -x ?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Whoops I misread the screenshot

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

sudo chmod 777 ~/Downloads

As easy as that!