Xargs + chmod – file or directory not found

chmodfindpermissionspipexargs

I am trying to recursively change the permission of all files and directories in my project.

I found a post on the magento forum saying that I can use these commands:

find ./ -type f | xargs chmod 644
find ./ -type d | xargs chmod 755
chmod -Rf 777 var
chmod -Rf 777 media

It worked for find ./ -type d | xargs chmod 755.

The command find ./ -type f returned a lot of files, but I get chmod: access to 'fileXY.html' not possible: file or directory not found on all files, if I execute find ./ -type f | xargs chmod 644.

How can I solve this?

PS: I know that he recommended to use 777 permission for my var and media folder, which is a security risk, but what else should we use?

Best Answer

I’m guessing you’re running into files whose names contain characters which cause xargs to split them up, e.g. whitespace. To resolve that, assuming you’re using a version of find and xargs which support the appropriate options (which originated in the GNU variants, and aren’t specified by POSIX), you should use the following commands instead:

find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 644
find . -type d -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 755

or better yet,

chmod -R a-x,a=rX,u+w .

which has the advantages of being shorter, using only one process, and being supported by POSIX chmod (see this answer for details).

Your question on media and var is rather broad, if you’re interested in specific answers I suggest you ask it as a separate question with more information on what your use of the directories is.

Related Solutions

GNU Find – Understanding -regex with GNU Find

Finding with ls: first things first, ls | grep cisco is a bit verbose, since cisco isn't a regular expression. Try:

ls *cisco*

Using find: along the same lines, -regex is overkill with a simple, static pattern. How about:

find -name '*cisco*'

The quotes are required so the glob is interpreted by find, not the shell. Also, -print is required for many versions of find, but is optional (and the default predicate) for others (e.g. GNU find). Feel free to add it if you need it.

If you need to search for ‘cisco’ in the full pathname, you could try this:

find -path '*cisco*'

which is equivalent to find | fgrep cisco.

Using find with regular expressions: let's do that anyway, since this is what you want. Shamelessly copying from the GNU find manpage:

-regex pattern

          File  name  matches  regular  expression  pattern.  This is a match
          on the whole path, not a search.  For example, to match a file named
          `./fubar3', you can use the regular expression `.*bar.' or `.*b.*3',
          but not `f.*r3'.

What this means is that your regular expression is wrapped in an invisible ^...$, so it must match every character in the full pathname of the file. So, as nwildner and otokan said in the comments, you should use something like:

find -regex '.*cisco.*'

And you don't even need the -regextype for something this simple.

Windows – Best practice for mounting a Windows partition

You can use fmask and dmask mount options^* to change the permission mapping on an ntfs filesystem.

To make files appear rw-r--r-- (644) and directories rwxr-xr-x (755) use fmask=0133,dmask=0022. You can combine this with uid= and gid= options to select the file owner and group if you need write access for your user.

_{* fmask and dmask seem to work for the kernel (read-only) driver as well, even that they are not documented in mount man page. They are documented options for ntfs-3g.}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

GNU Find – Understanding -regex with GNU Find

Windows – Best practice for mounting a Windows partition

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