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?
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7 Answers
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.
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1This assumes that stat is present. I've found, regrettably, that the command stat is often not present.– MeiAug 25, 2009 at 9:02
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1@David, I don't know of such a system lacking of stat. But it is quite trivial to use the following "octal ls" version and accommodate the given solution accordingly: alias ols="ls -la | awk '{k=0;for(i=0;i<=8;i++)k+=((substr(\$1,i+2,1)~/[rwx]/)*2^(8-i));if(k)printf(\" %0o \",k);print}'"– drAlberTAug 25, 2009 at 12:01
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Breaks when any path involved contains any sort of special character (whitespace, starts with dashes, etc).– n.stAug 4, 2017 at 17:13
I just learned a new and simple way to accomplish this:
getfacl -R /path/to/source > /root/perms.acl
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.
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this is a very straightforward and simple way to backup and restore permissions. Note however that
getfaclandsetfaclare not necessarily present on all systems. Oct 24, 2013 at 14:58 -
Is it correct to have
.acin the first command and.aclin the second?– sfarbotaAug 2, 2017 at 21:54 -
1@sfarbota: No, it was a typo! Corrected now. Thanks for pointing it out.– marlarAug 4, 2017 at 15:25
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...
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1
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@yawniek The
-rand--permsare redundant, but this still sync perms if they are the only thing that is different (which is what you said in the Question; if the trees are not actually identical you should not have said that they were).– Chris SFeb 7, 2012 at 13:46 -
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
...
answered Aug 25, 2009 at 7:34
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1I suspect the -printf argument to find is a GNU extension? HP-UX find doesn't have it.– MeiAug 25, 2009 at 9:04
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1Even without the printf option to find, one can use the ls option (or, at worst, pipe to xargs ls -l) and save in a file. A minute or two of search and replace, and one will have a script with chmod for each file.– mpez0Feb 26, 2010 at 14:34
Two ways:
- If it works on your brand of UNIX: cp -ax /src /dest
- 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.
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It's worth mentioning that -a (for archive) is a GNU addition to cp, I've never seen it on any other system. It's just short for -dpR (no de-reference, recursive, preserve permissions). The R and p options should be in any version of cp Aug 25, 2009 at 8:34
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.
I came up with this:
find $SOURCE -mindepth 1 -printf 'chmod --reference=%p\t%p\n'|sed "s/\t$SOURCE/ $DEST/g"|sh
It is not fully bullet proof, but does what I need.
