Linux/SVN Annoying folder access problem

Question

This is a annoying problem and I have no idea what is causing it. java and projects are two svn repository directories in /home/svn.

drwxrwSr-x 6 svn svn 4096 2010-10-19 19:36 java
drwxrwsr-x 6 svn svn 4096 2010-10-18 17:20 projects

They have the same permissions and files inside them have same permissions as well, which is drwxrwsr-x.

abc is a user who also a member of the svn group. I can access projects folder but on the java folder it says.

bash: cd: java/: Permission denied 

Earlier I couldn't even access /home/svn folder through user abc, even though I been doing that for some time now

drwxrw-r-x  5 svn    svn    4096 2010-10-19 23:09 svn

I had to change permission of svn directory from drwxrw-r-x to drwxrwxr-x in order to access it as abc

Thanks

Answer 1

The execute access bit x on directories allows to traverse the directory. It means tho when permissions are set to drwxrw-r-x, the group does not have traverse(execute) access right. As you are not user svn, but user abc, and abc is member of the svn group, user abc cannot traverse the directory. This results in the `Permission denied' message.

Answer 2

Your java folder has the SGID-bit set with execute permission (see the capital S in your directory listing). The project folder does not.

Use

chmod g-s java
chmod g+x java
chmod g+s java

to make it the same as the project folder