CHAPTER 15

Setting Ownership and Permissions

As a multi-user OS, Linux provides tools to help you secure your files against unwanted access—after all, you wouldn't want another user to accidentally (or intentionally) read personal files or even delete your files! Linux handles these tasks through two features of files and directories: their ownership and their permissions. Every file has an associated owner (that is, an account with which it's linked), and also an associated group. Three sets of permissions define what the file's owner, members of the file's group, and all other users can do with the file. Thus, ownership and permissions are intertwined, although you use different text-mode commands to manipulate them. (GUI tools often combine ...

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