Need to fix file permissions in a user's home directory

This should do the trick:

find /home/user -type d -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 0775
find /home/user -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 0664

find can do the trick alone with -exec:

find /home/user -type f -exec chmod 0664 {} \;
find /home/user -type d -exec chmod 0775 {} \;

to prevent find from spawning a chmod for each entry:

find /home/user -type f -exec chmod 0664 {} +
find /home/user -type d -exec chmod 0775 {} +

(this effectively calls chmod once with the list of all files as parameters rather than one chmod per file)

This answer won't solve your problem, but someone might find it useful for a similar problem where files have less permission than they should do.

# chmod -R . u=rwX,g=rX,o=rX

The magic is the X permission, rather than x. The chmod manpage describes it thus:

execute/search only if the file is a directory or already has execute permission for some user

This isn't suitable in your case as your files have execute permission so, will match the second test.

I made a really simple bash script the other day because I needed to fix permissions. Why isn't there a formal utility to reset basic, non-root, file and folder permissions?

The script uses find to 755 all folders and 644 libraries. It then tests each file with readelf to see if it has a binary elf header. If not, it scans in the first two characters for shebang #!. It 755 those instances and 644 everything else after it checks to see if the file already has the matching permission.

Special cases are handled with an exception like the *.bak for files to be ignored.

#!/bin/bash
read -r -p "Correct file and folder permissions? [y/N] " chse
if [[ "$chse" =~ ^([yY][eE][sS]|[yY])+$ ]]; then
  echo "Processing ..."
  find -H $(pwd) -type d -exec chmod 0755 {} \;
  # set dirs to 755
  find -H $(pwd) -type f \( -iname '*.so.*' -o -iname '*.so' \) -exec chmod 0644 {} \;
  # libs
  IFS=$'\n'
  for value in $(find -H $(pwd) -type f ! \( -iname '*.so.*' -o -iname '*.so' -o -iname '*.bak' \) -printf '%p\n'); do
    tstbin=$(readelf -l "$value" 2>/dev/null | grep -Pio 'executable|shared')
    if [ -z "$tstbin" ]; then
      tstbat=$(cat "$value" | head -c2 | grep -io '#!')
      if [ -n "$tstbat" ]; then
        perm=$(stat -c '%a' "$value")
        if [ "$perm" != "755" ]; then
          chmod 755 $value
          echo "Set script  755 $value"
          # set batch to 755
        fi
      else
        perm=$(stat -c '%a' "$value")
        if [ "$perm" != "644" ]; then
          chmod 644 $value
          echo "Set regular 644 $value"
          # set regular files to 644
        fi
      fi
      # above aren't elf binary
    else
      perm=$(stat -c '%a' "$value")
      if [ "$perm" != "755" ]; then
        chmod 755 $value
        echo "Set binary  755 $value"
        # set elf binaries to 755
      fi
    fi
  done
  unset IFS
  # process linux permissions for files and folders
else
  echo "Aborted."
fi

In case that you're using ssh, it's good idea not to modify ~/.ssh permissions.

DIR=/home/user
find $DIR -type d -not -path "$DIR/.ssh" -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 0775
find $DIR -type f -not -path "$DIR/.ssh/*" -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 0664

I made a script out of freiheit's solution, it adds basic argument checking.

#!/bin/sh

if [ $# -lt 1 ]; then
    echo "USAGE: $0 <path>"
    exit 1
fi

find $1 -type d -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 0755
find $1 -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 0644

An alternative, which does not exactly answer the original request, but is more likely what the OP intends, is to specify the permissions symbolically. E.g., I assume that OP wants to "remove write access for the public, and remove executable permission from all files".

This is possible if you use the symbolic permission representation.

• o-w is "remove write access from the public" ("o" - others, "-" - remove, "w" - write)
• a-x is "remove execute for everyone on files only" ("a" - all, "-" - remove, "x" - execute)

Writing it out this way instead of explicitly setting "0664" you avoid accidentally allowing extra permissions to files that were previously locked down. E.g., if a file was 0770 it will not become 0664 by mistake.

To do the first requirement you can just use chmod:

chmod --recursive o-w $dir

To do the second requirement:

find $dir -type f -exec chmod a-x {} +

Or to do both:

find $dir -type f -exec chmod a-x,o-w {} +
find $dir -type d -exec chmod o-w {} +

I use this script https://github.com/TheKito/Scripts/blob/master/FixHomesDirectoryPermissions.sh

#!/bin/bash
HME=/home
for i in $(ls "$HME");
do
        if [ -d "$HME/$i" ]; then
                echo "$i";
                chown -R $i "$HME/$i"
                chgrp -R $i "$HME/$i"
                find "$HME/$i" -type d -exec chmod 0770 "{}" \;
                find "$HME/$i" -type f -exec chmod 0660 "{}" \;
        fi
done;

I found a simplified C-shell solution. This might not be completely fool proof but should work for most directories. It assumes the Unix 'file' command works, and finds exec files to reset them back to exec permissions:

find /home/user -type d | xargs chmod 0775
find /home/user -type f | xargs -0 chmod 0664
find /home/user -type f -exec file {} \; | grep executable | cut -d":" -f1 | xargs chmod 0775