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Joe Holloway
Asked: 2009-05-02 12:18:52 +0800 CST

How does one get setfacl to set ACL permissions recursively on Linux?

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I'm setting up a new server and wanted to give ACL a shot over the chown:chgrp:chmod style permissions.

The man page for setfacl indicates that the '-R' option can be used to set the ACL recursively on files and directories.

-R, --recursive Apply operations to all files and directories recursively. This option cannot be mixed with ‘--restore’.

If my directory layout looks like this

test/
   subtest/
   subtest.txt

and I execute

setfacl -Rm d:u:foo:rwX test

The ACL takes effect on the 'subtest' directory, but not the subtest.txt file.

I think I can use find + exec to workaround it, but I plan to use this server to train a few other admin and I am wanting to keep it as simple as possible so we don't get hung up on some of the more advanced conventions.

Thanks

linux permissions

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Try:

    setfacl --recursive --modify u:foo:rwX,d:u:foo:rwX test

    to modify the current ACL as well as the default. I believe "d:" only affects the (d)efault ACL of directories and leaves files untouched. Then, if you create a new file in the directory, it inherits the ACL of its parent directory via the default.

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