Linux Folder Permissions

Short for ‘change mode’, chmod was developed in the early 1970s at the same time as AT&T’s first version of Unix. In Unix-like multi-user operating systems, chmod is responsible for assigning and changing access rights in file systems that are supported by Unix rights management. This also applies to all standard file systems in conventional Linux derivatives intended for server operation support. Changing access rights with this command can only be carried out by the file owner or the root user.

Linux distributions such as Ubuntu are among the most popular choices for web server operators. One feature that all Unix derivatives share is that files and directories are assigned certain access rights. But users have the ability to change such settings by activating the command line program, ‘chmod’.