Is there a shell command to recursively give permission to directories and files?

Question

Can someone please give me a recursive command that will go through a directory and make all normal files permission 644 and all sub directories 755?

I am really getting tired of doing this manually every time I have to install something on my host. I don't know enough BASH (Shell?) command to do this.

Answer 1

First line changes file permissions, and the second changes directory permissions in the active directory and its subdirectories.

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

Answer 2

There is X option for that.

chmod a+X * -R

This will give execute bit only to directories, not files. To set 644, 755, respectively with one command, use:

chmod a=rX,u+w <files/dirs> -R

Answer 3

Using symbolic mode names instead of raw numeric permissions:

chmod -R u=rwX,go=rX somedir

The X permission flag only sets directories or already executable files as executable, the -R flag means "recursive" and applies the permissions to all the contents of the somedir.

Answer 4

No, there is no command to recursively change the permissions. If there were such a command, it would violate the Unix mantra: Do One Thing And Do It Well.

However, there are two commands: one for recursing (find), and one for changing permissions (chmod).

So, the magic command line is:

find . -type d -exec chmod 0755 '{}' + -or -type f -exec chmod 0644 '{}' +