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From: Wolfgang Helbig <helbig@Informatik.BA-Stuttgart.DE>
Message-Id: <199710110840.KAA02306@rvc1.informatik.ba-stuttgart.de>
Subject: Re: group permissions
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.95.971010170030.2093A-100000@luke.cpl.net> from Shawn Ramsey at "Oct 10, 97 05:03:07 pm"
To: shawn@luke.cpl.net (Shawn Ramsey)
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 1997 10:40:13 +0200 (MET DST)
Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG
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> > What is the error message if you try to read it?
> 
> 
> cd /etc/namedb 
> namedb: Permission denied. 

You probably don't have execute permission for namedb (and/or for
/etc which is rather unlikely). To use a directory in a pathname
you must have execute permission for that directory.  To read the
filenames in a directory, you must have read permission for that
directory.

To set the execute permission for all, use chmod a+x /etc/namedb
To set the read permission for all, use chmod a+r /etc/namedb

To check the permissions use ls -ld /etc/namedb.
ls -ld /etc:
drwxr-xr-x  14 root  wheel  2048  7 Okt 01:25 /etc
 ^ ^^ ^^ ^
 | || || `-- execute permission for others
 | || |`---- read permissions for others
 | || `----- execute permission for members of the group wheel
 | |`------- read permisson for members of the group wheel
 | `-------- execute permission for root
 `---------- read permission for root

For further details consult the manual page for chmod and ls.

Wolfgang