On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 12:53 PM, Dan Dubovik <dandubo@gmail.com> wrote:

> For the record, I'm with Dale here.  Generally speaking, running a chown /
> chmod against an entire system is bad.  There are system files that have
> setuid / setgid set, and for good reason (/bin/su comes to mind).  There
> could be uses for specific directories however, and with that in mind:
>
> From the find man page:
>        -P     Never follow symbolic links.  This is the default behaviour.
>  When find examines or prints information a file, and the file  is a
> symbolic link, the information used shall be taken from the properties of
> the symbolic link itself.
>
> So to shorten Kaia's command, just add -P to it, and it will ignore
> symlinks.  Mind you, this is being explicit in the command, as the default
> is to not follow symlinks.  If you want it to follow symlinks, use the -L
> switch.
>
> This would modify the command to:
> find -P [dir] -exec chown user:group {} \;
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 11:57 AM, <joe@actionline.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> Thanks Dale, Kaia, and Eric ...
>>
>> Sincerely appreciate all of your answers. Each one helped.
>>
>> I fully realize that entirely too often, I have no idea what I am doing;
>> but I just blindly muddle along anyway and somehow, by the grace of God
>> and the guidance of so many excellent plug friends, I manage to sort
>> things out and happily survive. ;)
>>
>> In this case, I learned a bit more from each answer, some of which I
>> understand, and some of which I still do not understand. However, I got
>> the result that I needed. I just test various commands on a small sample
>> and once I eventually get something to work, I apply it further.
>>
>> Joe
>>
>>
>> > I originally wrote:
>> >> While the example commands below work to change permission for either a
>> >> complete system or for a complete directory and all sub-directories,
>> >> what would the syntax be for a similar command to 'chown' (change the
>> >> owner) globally or for a designated directory and and the files and
>> >> subdirectories below it?
>> >>
>> >> find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 644
>> >> find . -type d -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 755
>> >>
>> >> find dir -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 644
>> >> find dir -type d -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 744
>>
>> Dale wrote:
>> > Joe, before answering your question, I feel the need to warn you.
>> >
>> > If you understood what the above commands do, the answer would be
>> obvious
>> > and you wouldn't have asked the question.  Further, IMHO, unless you
>> know
>> > what each part of the above commands do, you shouldn't use them.  Each
>> > line has three commands, each of which is readily understandable with
>> > some effort.
>> >
>> > (BTW, none of the above commands change permissions for a complete
>> system.
>> > They only do it recursively for files in a directory or for a directory
>> > and its subdirectories.)
>> >
>> > To change the owner and group for a directory and recursively to its
>> > files and subdirectories, do:
>> >
>> > (1)   chown -R owner:group dir
>> >
>> > To change just the owner:
>> >
>> > (2)   chown -R owner dir
>> >
>> > To change just the group:
>> >
>> > (3)   chown -R :group dir
>> >
>> > An alternative way (just less efficient) to accomplish (1) is:
>> >
>> > (4)   find dir -print0 | xargs -0 chown owner:group
>> >
>> > -Dale
>>
>> ===== Previous replies:
>> A: Eric wrote: to globally change owner:
>> find dir -type f -exec chmod user:group {} \;
>> find dir -type d -exec chmod user:group {} \;
>>
>> (J: I discovered that 'chmod' in the Eric's example
>> should apparently have been 'chown' ... I think.)
>>
>> A: Kaia.Taylor@schwab.com -- To avoid any surprises with links,
>> if there are any, do this first:
>> find [dir] -type l | more
>> Then:
>> find [dir] -exec chown user:group {} \;
>>
>
Yes, I, too, have worked with the regex command line cowboys, ("Opps was
that supposed to be a backtick?")?

I would suggest a nice:

tar -cvzf /tmp/safetynet-file.tgz {$filespectree}

You do of course have a nice automated /tmp directory cleaner on your nix of
choice?

If not:

rm /tmp/safetynet*

And also, since I like to remember things I use, so I don't have constantly
recreate the wheel, why not put it all in a standard bin as a script?
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