Permissions and ownership

Set file permissions and ownership correctly without opening up too much. With typical values for web directories, WordPress installations and Plesk subscriptions.

15 one-liners: 8 harmless, 7 caution, 0 destructive

chmod 8 find 7 chown 4 security 4 wordpress 3 plesk 2 acl 2

Check permissions along a path

$namei -l /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/index.php

Copy permissions and owner from a reference file

#chmod --reference=/var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/index.php /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/wp-config.php && chown --reference=/var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/index.php /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/wp-config.php

Find files with the SUID or SGID bit

#find / -xdev \( -perm -4000 -o -perm -2000 \) -type f -exec ls -l {} + 2>/dev/null

Find files with the wrong owner in a webspace

#find /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs ! -user webuser -ls

Find files without a valid owner

#find /var/www -xdev \( -nouser -o -nogroup \) -ls 2>/dev/null

Find world-writable files and directories

$find /var/www/vhosts -xdev -perm -0002 ! -type l -ls 2>/dev/null

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Grant a user write access with ACLs

#setfacl -R -m u:deploy:rwX,d:u:deploy:rwX /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs

Remove write permission for others recursively

$chmod -R o-w /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs

Reset file ownership in a Plesk webspace to the subscription user

#find /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs -mindepth 1 -exec chown -h webuser:psacln {} +

Secure the permissions of wp-config.php

$chmod 600 /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/wp-config.php

Set all directories to 755 recursively

$find /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs -type d -exec chmod 755 {} +

Set all files to 644 recursively

$find /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs -type f -exec chmod 644 {} +

Show permissions and owner in octal notation

$stat -c '%a %U:%G %n' /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/* /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/.[!.]*

Show the ACL permissions of a file

$getfacl /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs

Show the current umask

$umask && umask -S