On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 07:36:17PM -0700, Gordon Messmer wrote:
You and John are both incorrect. Read access is sufficient to get a list of files and directories in a given directory. The execute bit on a directory is required to access the directory's contents. If a directory is 'rw-' for a user (other than root), the user can get a list of its contents using 'ls'. However, since the contents are not available, the user cannot stat() the names to determine what type of file they are, their size, their owner/group, etc. The user will also not be able to chdir to a sub-directory without execute access.
IOW, ls will work fine, but ls -l will not. (To be specific, a plain old /bin/ls will work fine. If you have any ls options that need to read the contents of the directory, like -l or -F, it'll b0rk.)
On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 11:20:57PM -0400, Stephen Harris wrote:
Basically nothing non-root running will work properly on these machines. And if everything is designed to run as root then the architect has shown other issues. "root" is the user of last recourse on a properly managed server.
If it's an embedded server, like a home wifi router device, running everything as root isn't such a big deal. If it's a real server it's in deep trouble.
--keith