chmod exclusions

Question

I know I should assign a group and then set an umask so that groups writable permissions persist but for whatever reason I can't do this. I need to chmod recursively a directory except one sub folder (web10), would the following work?

cd /var/www/clients/
find . -type f -not -path "*web10*" -exec chmod 777 '{}' \;

This question is better suited for the [UNIX & Linux](http://unix.stackexchange.com) StackExchange site — Bert, Feb 18 '13 at 21:15

Olaf Dietsche · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-11T22:17:47.883

1

If you want to exclude files or directories, you use -prune

find /var/www/clients/ -name web10 -type d -prune -o -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 0640

You should also use xargs where possible. With -exec you call the command once for every file found, whereas xargs collects as many files as possible and calls the command once for N files, resulting in a more efficient execution and better performance.

edited Mar 11 '13 at 22:17

answered Feb 18 '13 at 21:54

Olaf Dietsche

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`sudo: unable to execute /bin/chmod: Argument list too long` any way to deal with that? – Ascherer Mar 11 '13 at 19:18
@Ascherer I don't see, how sudo fits in here. That depends on the concrete command line. It is best to ask a new question with the complete example. – Olaf Dietsche Mar 11 '13 at 20:45
running the chmod at the end as sudo. Found too many files it looks like – Ascherer Mar 11 '13 at 22:12
@Ascherer `xargs` should prevent this. I just saw, that I missed the `-0` argument to xargs. Please retry. – Olaf Dietsche Mar 11 '13 at 22:18

chmod exclusions

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