PERMISSIONS - cf, mf, cc, and mc permission conventions.

Description:

When you create or modify a file or catalog, you can specify general or specific permissions, in order to control who can do what to the file or catalog. This explain file shows how to specify permissions and describes what each permission means.

The permissions and their functions are given below. In many cases, both a long form and a short form are shown.

delete

This is not a permission, but rather a way to force the removal of previously existing specific permissions.

none

This is used to remove general permissions on a file or catalog.

exclude

This is not a permission, but rather a way to specify no permissions. It is often used to specifically exclude a user or users from the privileges granted by general permissions.

read or r

This allows the reading of file contents. READ permission also implies EXECUTE permission.

write or w

This allows the writing of file contents. WRITE implies READ, APPEND, and EXECUTE permissions.

append or a

This is treated the same as READ.

execute or e

This only allows execution of file contents. Thus reading is restricted to loading or compilation. Since EXECUTE has no meaning for a catalog, several UW Tools commands respect EXECUTE as permission to display information about the catalog (note that ACCESS does this as well).

recovery or rec

This is the same as write, but it also allows writing if the file is abort locked or has defective space. RECOVERY implies WRITE, APPEND, EXECUTE, and READ.

purge or p

This allows a file or a catalog (and subordinate structure) to be deleted. PURGE also implies everything implied by RECOVERY.

create or c

This allows files or catalogs to be created under a catalog. CREATE does not imply any other permissions.

lock or l

This allows the security locking of a file or catalog, the removal of a security lock, or the access of a file that is security locked or is under a security locked catalog. LOCK does not imply any other permissions.

modify or m

This allows the changing of the attributes of a file or catalog. Since the holder of MODIFY permission can use it to get any other permission, MODIFY implies all the permissions above.

Several permissions imply other permissions. If you only want to give a particular permission without including the implied ones, simply give the permission followed by the character "o" (meaning "only"). For example,

ro -- read only
wo -- write only
mo -- modify only

You can supply more than one general or specific permission argument in an ACCESS command line. If you do, the result includes all permissions specified. Thus the new general permission includes all general permissions specified, while the new specific permission for a userid includes all the specific permissions named for that userid.

See Also:

expl access efso

for instructions on how to set and remove security locks.

Copyright © 1996, Thinkage Ltd.