*BSD News Article 47396


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From: acinader@panix.com (Arthur Cinader)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc
Subject: Re: HELP!!!!!!
Date: 20 Jul 1995 14:16:48 -0400
Organization: Panix
Lines: 115
Message-ID: <3um6ig$g3j@panix.com>
References: <3um37n$sv0@steel.interlog.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com

In <3um37n$sv0@steel.interlog.com> kingkaos@gold.interlog.com (King Kaos) writes:

>     HI.   

Hi,

Just a suggestion to begin with, use a more descriptive
subject line in your posts, as it will get you more readers.

moving on to business,


>I have  BSDI BSD/OS 2.0 Kernel #0.  I would like to know if
>there is a web site or text file that explains the "lines" you see
>we you enter 'ls -l' at your home dir????  

Your best bet would be to read the ls man pages.

bsdi% man ls

Will get you there.  I just checked out sun's ls man page
and it will do the trick for you, I can't vouch for BSDI's as
I can't get to my system right now due to a down line....

>For example I wanta know 
>what this line "says":

>rw-w--rw-- 2 kingkaos 5216 the-date   file.name


I am not too sure of my interpretation here, so I invite
contradiction from more experieced users....

1. I think that this is not an exact copy of output.  I think
it should look like this:

-rw--w-rw- 2 kingkaos 5216 the-date file.name

As I have written it, the first character (in this case -)
will tell you what type of file it is...

'-' means a plain vanilia text or binary file
'd' means a directory
'b' means a block file (device file)

for all of the opther possibilies, see the man page

The next nine spaces are the interesting part.  They are the
permissions for the file (set by chmod, see the man page (man
chmod))

here is how they work...

0123456789
-rw--w-rw-

The character in the 0 space above I have explained already.  

Characters 1-3 are the user permissions

-rwx

indicates that the user can read, write, and execute the filr

-r-x

would indicate that the user can read, not write, but execute
the file.

Permissions will always be in the order rwx for read, write,
and execute.  A - indicates that the permission is denied, and
an r, w, or x indicates that the permission is granted.

character 456 are the group permissions (I wont explain what a
group is, but a file may belong to a group as well as to a
user.)

Character 789 are the permissions for the rest of the world.
This means that all user on your system, and all user that
have access to your system may read, write, or execute
the file, if the permissions are set!

-rw--w-rw- 2 kingkaos 5216 the-date file.name

the 2 after the permission section indicates how many links
there are to a file..I am not sure about this, but I think
that in the case of a directory that number indicate how many
inodes the directory requires to list its contents...

kingkaos is the owner of the file (and the one whoe the first
three permission bits effect)

5216 is the size of the file in bytes (so this file is about
5k)

the-date is the date the file was last modified (very useful
info indeed!)

and file.name, as you may guess is the file name.

>I WANTA know what all the opinions are, and in the /dev directory
>there is no 'file size' instead I se   4, 5, 2  in the file size
>area.  Any help will be appericated.  Thank's


As for what is going on with the device files (the ones in the
/dev directory), beats me...Help?!

Hope all this helps, but your best bet is to read man pages
for ls and chmod and then create a file and play with its
permissions to see how it works.

By for now,

Arthur