6

I am able to list directories in a root shell,

root@ThinkPad:~# ll /media/
total 36
drwxr--r--  6 root root  4096 2011-05-12 16:41 ./
drwxr-xr-x 22 root root  4096 2011-05-12 13:14 ../
drwxr-xr-x  5 root root  4096 2011-05-12 15:56 hd/
drwxr--r--  2 root root 16384 2011-05-12 14:20 lost+found/
drwxr-xr-x  5 root root  4096 2011-05-12 16:34 main/
drwxr--r--  4 root root  4096 2011-05-12 16:41 .Trash-0/

but not from my user account:

alex@ThinkPad:~$ ll /media/
ls: cannot access /media/..: Permission denied
ls: cannot access /media/hd: Permission denied
ls: cannot access /media/lost+found: Permission denied
ls: cannot access /media/.Trash-0: Permission denied
ls: cannot access /media/.: Permission denied
ls: cannot access /media/main: Permission denied
total 0
d????????? ? ? ? ?                ? ./
d????????? ? ? ? ?                ? ../
d????????? ? ? ? ?                ? hd/
d????????? ? ? ? ?                ? lost+found/
d????????? ? ? ? ?                ? main/
d????????? ? ? ? ?                ? .Trash-0/

I don't understand why I can't see files (/media has a+r permission).

0

2 Answers 2

24

To be able to "enter" a directory, which is kind of a prerequisite for listing its content, you also need the +x permission.

Also note that this is a requirement all the way from the top (root) of the directory structure. To be able to enter a /foo/bar/baz directory a user needs to have the +x permission on every single intermediate directory.

0

I use my pathlld script. pathlld is:

#!/bin/bash
# Show the permissions on all the directories leading from / to
# the parameter.
# Usage: $0 <file_or_dir> <...>
#
#   $Header: /home/walt/bin/RCS/pathlld,v 1.4 2010/02/21 20:34:16 walt Exp $
#
#
function pathlld ()
{
    if [ "$1" = "/" ] ; then
    /bin/ls -ld /
    else
    parent="${1%/*}"
    pathlld "${parent:-/}"
    /bin/ls -ld "$1"
    fi
}
force=0
if [ "$1" = "-f" ] ; then
    force=1
    shift
fi
# Make sure we got at least one filename or directory name
file_or_dir="$1"
file_or_dir="${file_or_dir:?'missing.'}"

while [ $# -ne 0 ] ; do
    if [ $force -eq 1 -o -e "$1" ] ; then
    case "$1" in
        /* ) target="$1" ;;
        *  ) target="$PWD/$1" ;;
    esac
    pathlld "$target"
    [ -L "$target" ] && /bin/ls -ldL "$target"
    else
    echo "Nonexistent file or directory: $1"
    fi
    shift
done

It doesn't detect filesystems mounted read-only, use mount for that.

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