Linux – Make recursive chmod faster

chmodlinux

I have an installation script that unzips a directory, then recursively chmods its contents.

I'm surprised it takes almost 10 times the time it takes to unzip, to run the following two commands:

find $dir -type f -exec chmod a+r "{}" \;
find $dir -type d -exec chmod a+rx "{}" \;

Am I doing something wrong, is there a faster way to change the chmod of all files and directories?

Best Answer

You can get rid of the find commands by using chmod's X flag:

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

This allows you to set the same permissions on files and directories, with directories additionally being executable, with a single command:

$ chmod -R a+rX $dir

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Assuming you really need to be using find in order to recurse through subdirectories:

find /export/home/ftp \( -name console.log -or -name server.log \) -mtime +30 -exec rm -f {} +

Linux: Syncronize two directories permissions, users and groups and leave file contents untouched

You can use the --reference=file switch to both chmod and chown to do this e.g.

#!/bin/bash
for FILE  in /path/to/good/directory/*
do
    chown --reference="$FILE" /path/to/bad/directory/"$(basename "$FILE")"
    chmod --reference="$FILE" /path/to/bad/directory/"$(basename "$FILE")"
done

Best Answer

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