Problem with file permissions

Question

I am having a problem with accessing my files.
I have a music partition, to which I added several album folders. Madsonic did not have permission to view the music. I chmod 666 the whole partition. Now all of my music folders appear as files. When I click on one I get 'The folder contents could not be displayed:you do not have the permissions necessary' (again, the folders all appear as files). I cannot cd to ~/Music, unless I am SU. ls -al on ~/Music gives

$ cd /home/loz/Music
Music $ ls -al
total 472
drw-rw-rw- 46 loz loz   4096 Nov  3 10:34 .
drwxr-xr-x 40 loz loz   4096 Nov  3 09:34 ..
drw-rw-rw-  2 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:42 About a boy
drw-rw-rw-  4 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:24 Akurat
drw-rw-rw-  2 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:25 Alanis Morissette
drw-rw-rw-  2 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:25 Amy Winehouse
drw-rw-rw-  4 loz loz   4096 Sep 14 23:09 Arctic Monkeys
drw-rw-rw-  2 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:25 Bjork
drw-rw-rw-  2 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:25 Canibal The Musical
drw-rw-rw-  3 loz loz   4096 Oct  4 13:52 Cast
drw-rw-rw-  6 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:12 coldplay
drw-rw-rw-  2 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:26 Damien Rice
drw-rw-rw-  4 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:17 Eva Cassidy - Somewhere (MP3) 2Lions
drw-rw-rw-  3 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:18 Eva Cassidy - Time After Time (Flac) (KingNova)
drw-rw-rw-  2 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:26 inne
drw-rw-rw-  2 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:26 Jamiroquai
-rw-rw-rw-  1 loz loz 280787 Apr 11  2013 Justin ringtone.mp3
drw-rw-rw-  2 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 19:16 Kama i Julia 2010.08
drw-rw-rw-  3 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:27 Katie Melua
drw-rw-rw-  2 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:27 Lenny Kravitz
drw-rw-rw-  2 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:28 Leon Jackson
drw-rw-rw-  6 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:29 LifeHouse Discography
drw-rw-rw-  2 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:30 Lily Allen
drw-rw-rw-  2 loz loz  16384 Sep  5 10:03 lost+found
drw-rw-rw-  2 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:15 Love Actually [2003][Eng]DVDRip-woodster
drw-rw-rw-  2 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:31 Michael Buble
drw-rw-rw-  3 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:31 Mika
drw-rw-rw-  2 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:32 Mor ve otesi
drw-rw-rw-  2 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:32 Myslovitz
drw-rw-rw-  2 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:32 Nelly Furtado
drw-rw-rw-  4 loz loz   4096 Sep 15 03:28 Nirvana
drw-rw-rw-  2 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:33 Nora Jones
drw-rw-rw-  2 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:33 Ona
drw-rw-rw- 12 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:38 Pearl Jam - Discography
drw-rw-rw-  2 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:39 Peter Gabriel
drw-rw-rw-  6 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:16 Pink
drw-rw-rw-  2 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:17 Pink - Funhouse - 2008
drw-rw-rw-  8 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:35 P!nk
drw-rw-rw-  2 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:39 Power of trinity
drw-rw-rw-  2 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:39 REM
drw-rw-rw-  2 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:40 Sam Sparro
drw-rw-rw-  2 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:40 The Cranberries
drw-rw-rw-  2 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:41 The doors - Waiting For The Sun
drw-rw-rw-  4 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:41 The Red Hot Chili Peppers
drw-rw-rw-  3 loz loz   4096 Sep 14 23:12 The Stone Roses
drw-rw-rw-  5 loz loz   4096 Nov  3 11:16 .Trash-1000
drw-rw-rw-  2 loz loz   4096 Nov  1 18:42 Walk Hard_ The Dewey Cox Story

so I do have the necessary permissions, and the files are recognised as Dirs. Is there any way to solve this problem?

Answer 1

Your folders need to have x bit set. So set your permissions as 775 (or 755) as you see fit to all folders. You can do a chmod -R 755 ~/Music, that will change permissions recursively on all files inside too. An explanation of how permission bits are treated differently for directories can be found here; in our case:

• The execute bit allows the affected user to enter the directory, and access files and directories inside.