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Accepted
Adam Goldman
Asked: 2016-09-05 07:08:52 +0800 CST

making file executable works only from GUI, not Terminal

  • 772

From GUI this works: open file properties menu -> Permissions Tab -> check "Allow executing file as a program"

From terminal running chmod -x filename doesn't do anything, nor outputs anything.

Things I've tried: 

# 1
$ chown $USER filename
$ sudo chmod -x filename

# 2 
$ sudo chmod -x filename

# 3
$ chmod -777 filename

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance :)

command-line

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    your command chmod -x deprives the execution permission. if you want to make it executable try:

    chmod +x filename
    • 4

  2. To check your permissions you can cd to the desired folder and then do a ls -l , which will then display the permissions along with the filenames just like this:

    check the right side

    Here you can see there are a bunch of .cpp files which contain some C++ code , look at their permissions -rw-r--r-- which means they are can be read by everyone but can only be written by the owner. Thus

    • r : readable
    • w : writable
    • x : executable

    And

    • Last three Places : Others Permissions
    • Next three Places : Group Permissions
    • And the last Four places : Owner Permissions (the d means its a directory)

    Now you can add and remove permissions with chmod , where ,

    • u : Owner
    • g : Group
    • o : Other
    • a : All

    For example , as in your case to add the executable permission for the owner you can use the command chmod u+x <filemane> .

    Note : Using a - instead of a + in the above command will remove that permission , for example to prevent others from reading you can use this command : chmod o-r <filename>

    • 1