Copy permissions to identical tree on linux / unix

Question

i have a tree of files with correct permission. then i have a (filewise) identical tree (with different file contents tough) with wrong permissions.

how can i transfer the permissions layout from one tree to another?

Answer 1

It can be done with the following shell line:

D1=foo; D2=foo2; for entry in $(find $D1  -exec stat -f "%N:%Mp%Lp" {} \;); do $(echo $entry | sed 's#'$D1'#'$D2'#' | awk -F: '{printf ("chmod %s %s\n", $2, $1)}') ; done

simply set the right value for D1 and D2 variables, point them to the source and destination directories, run and the dirs will have permissions in sync.

Answer 2

If you have the source and dest, you can synchronize your permissions with rsync -ar --perms source/ dest

It will not transfer the data, just permissions...

Answer 3

One thing you could do is use the find command to build a script with the commands you need to copy the permissions. Here is a quick example, you could do a lot more with the various printf options, including get the owner, group id, and so on.

$ find /var/log -type d -printf "chmod %m %p \n" > reset_perms
$ cat reset_perms
chmod 755 /var/log
chmod 755 /var/log/apt
chmod 750 /var/log/apache2
chmod 755 /var/log/fsck
chmod 755 /var/log/gdm
chmod 755 /var/log/cups
chmod 2750 /var/log/exim4
...

Answer 4

I just learned a new and simple way to accomplish this:

getfacl -R /path/to/source > /root/perms.ac

This will generate a list with all permissions and ownerships.

Then go to one level above the destination and restore the permissions with

setfacl --restore=/root/perms.acl

The reason you have to be one level above is that all paths in perms.acl are relative.

Should be done as root.

Answer 5

Two ways:

1. If it works on your brand of UNIX: cp -ax /src /dest
2. Or if not, this is the portable version: (cd /src && tar cpf - .) | (cd /dst && tar xpf -)

(in the latter case /dst must exist)

Edit: sorry, I misread. Not what you asked.

Answer 6

I think I'd write a perl script to do it. Something like:

#!/usr/bin/perl -nw

my $dir = $_;
my $mode = stat($dir)[2];
my $pathfix = "/some/path/to/fix/";
chmod $mode, $pathfix . $dir;

Then do something like this:

cd /some/old/orig/path/ ; find . -type d | perlscript

I wrote this off the top of my head, and it has not been tested; so check it before you let it run rampant. This only fixes permissions on directories that exist; it won't change permissions on files, nor will it create missing directories.