Is there a way to dump whole directory ownership and modes, recursively, on Linux

Question

I'm in the middle of Samba update on a number of servers, each with several shared directories. Users are authenticated against Windows domain AD, so I expect change in local UIDs on Linux boxes. I'd like to know if there is a way to dump ownership of all shared directories so I don't have to set it manually, but to restore it after upgrade.

Answer 1

you could do it by using a script.

1) Dump the directories (the names) in a file. 2) Use find path -type d (This is to print every directory under the path). 3) Find the common elements and apply ls -lah

A filthy way to do it. It is recommended only if you are desperate :>

Also you may find useful find . -type d -print0 {} \; | xargs ls -lah

Answer 2

You can use the getfacl tool (part of the acl package) to dump and restore both normal unix permissions and acls:

Use getfacl -R to dump the acls out into a file, and use setfacl --restore=file to restore them:

   --restore=file
       Restore a permission backup created by 'getfacl -R' or similar. All
       permissions of a complete directory subtree are restored using this
       mechanism.  If the input contains owner comments or group comments,
       setfacl attempts to restore the owner  and  owning  group.  If  the
       input contains flags comments (which define the setuid, setgid, and
       sticky bits), setfacl sets those three bits accordingly; otherwise,
       it  clears  them.  This  option  cannot be mixed with other options
       except '--test'.

This works even if you don't have acls set - the tool will dump and restore standard unix fs permissions. It will also work if your filesystem doesn't have acl support turned on (it's a non-default mount option for most filesystems still)

Answer 3

Solaris has an advantage here, as it has a nice command called pkgproto.

But you could use something like

find /home/elao/ -type d | xargs ls -lnd | awk '{print "chown "$3":"$4,$8}'