[NTLUG:Discuss] Is there a way to change permissions of a link

[MadHat]

Neil Aggarwal wrote:
> 
> Steve:
> 
> Thank you for the long disucssion of how symbolic links work.
> It was really very informative.
> 
> But my initial questions still remains.  Since the link is just
> a file, it has its own set of permissions.  Shoudlnt I be able to make
> the symlink readonly but have the file it points to be read/write?
> 
> If so, how can I do this?

Reread the explanation...  

a sym link is not a file (it does not have permissions), but an entry in
the directory that point to the file...  The file is what has the
permissions, not the directory entry.  A hard link would have the same
permissions as the origional file because that is stored in the INODE...

# touch file
# ls -l
-rwxr-xr-x   2 root     root            0 Nov  1 16:40 file

# ln file this
# ls -l
-rwxr-xr-x    2 root     root            0 Nov  1 16:40 file
-rwxr-xr-x    2 root     root            0 Nov  1 16:40 this 
# chmod 777 this
# ls -l
-rwxrwxrwx    2 root     root            0 Nov  1 16:40 file
-rwxrwxrwx    2 root     root            0 Nov  1 16:40 this 


I hope that came out right...  crappy netscape mail client...

-- 
MadHat at unspecific.com
                                   "The 3 great virtues of a programmer:
                                      Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris."
                                                 --Larry Wall