chacl(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | EXAMPLES | CAUTIONS | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

CHACL(1)                  Access Control Lists                  CHACL(1)

NAME         top

       chacl - change the access control list of a file or directory

SYNOPSIS         top

       chacl acl pathname...
       chacl -b acl dacl pathname...
       chacl -d dacl pathname...
       chacl -R pathname...
       chacl -D pathname...
       chacl -B pathname...
       chacl -l pathname...
       chacl -r pathname...

DESCRIPTION         top

       chacl is an IRIX-compatibility command, and is maintained for
       those users who are familiar with its use from either XFS or
       IRIX.  Refer to the SEE ALSO section below for a description of
       tools which conform more closely to the (withdrawn draft) POSIX
       1003.1e standard which describes Access Control Lists (ACLs).

       chacl changes the ACL(s) for a file or directory.  The ACL(s)
       specified are applied to each file in the pathname arguments.

       Each ACL is a string which is interpreted using the
       acl_from_text(3) routine.  These strings are made up of comma
       separated clauses each of which is of the form, tag:name:perm.
       Where tag can be:

       "user" (or "u")
              indicating that the entry is a "user" ACL entry.

       "group" (or "g")
              indicating that the entry is a "group" ACL entry.

       "other" (or "o")
              indicating that the entry is an "other" ACL entry.

       "mask" (or "m")
              indicating that the entry is a "mask" ACL entry.

       name is a string which is the user or group name for the ACL
       entry.  A null name in a user or group ACL entry indicates the
       file's owner or file's group.  perm is the string "rwx" where
       each of the entries may be replaced by a "-" indicating no access
       of that type, e.g. "r-x", "--x", "---".

OPTIONS         top

       -b     Indicates that there are two ACLs to change, the first is
              the file access ACL and the second the directory default
              ACL.

       -d     Used to set only the default ACL of a directory.

       -R     Removes the file access ACL only.

       -D     Removes directory default ACL only.

       -B     Remove all ACLs.

       -l     Lists the access ACL and possibly the default ACL
              associated with the specified files or directories.  This
              option was added during the Linux port of XFS, and is not
              IRIX compatible.

       -r     Set the access ACL recursively for each subtree rooted at
              pathname(s).  This option was also added during the Linux
              port of XFS, and is not compatible with IRIX.

EXAMPLES         top

       A minimum ACL:

         chacl u::rwx,g::r-x,o::r-- file

       The file ACL is set so that the file's owner has "rwx", the
       file's group has read and execute, and others have read only
       access to the file.

       An ACL that is not a minimum ACL, that is, one that specifies a
       user or group other than the file's owner or owner's group, must
       contain a mask entry:

         chacl u::rwx,g::r-x,o::r--,u:bob:r--,m::r-x file1 file2

       To set the default and access ACLs on newdir to be the same as on
       olddir, you could type:

         chacl -b `chacl -l olddir | \
             sed -e 's/.*\[//' -e 's#/# #' -e 's/]$//'` newdir

CAUTIONS         top

       chacl can replace the existing ACL.  To add or delete entries,
       you must first do chacl -l to get the existing ACL, and use the
       output to form the arguments to chacl.

       Changing the permission bits of a file will change the file
       access ACL settings (see chmod(1)).  However, file creation mode
       masks (see umask(1)) will not affect the access ACL settings of
       files created using directory default ACLs.

       ACLs are filesystem extended attributes and hence are not
       typically archived or restored using the conventional archiving
       utilities.  See attr(5) for more information about extended
       attributes and see xfsdump(8) for a method of backing them up
       under XFS.

SEE ALSO         top

       getfacl(1), setfacl(1), chmod(1), umask(1), acl_from_text(3),
       acl(5), xfsdump(8)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the acl (manipulating access control lists)
       project.  Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/acl⟩.  If you have a bug
       report for this manual page, see
       ⟨http://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?group=acl⟩.  This page was
       obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨git://git.savannah.nongnu.org/acl.git⟩ on 2023-12-22.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2023-12-01.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

September 2001             ACL File Utilities                   CHACL(1)