I have a question, I know for privileges, 4-READ, 2-Write, 1-Execute, so if a file has 754 privileges then owner has all privileges, folks in his groups can Read and execute that file. Others can only read the file.

So if there are three users A B C, A is the owner B is in GROUP AB and C is not in group AB. Now user C should be able to go to the subdir and be able to read the file say "file1".

So what privileges should be there, Remember people in group can read and execute the file, so that is a 5. Other should be able to just READ the file, so that is 4.

So if a dir permission looks like this

ls -la /HIGH_LEVEL_DIR
drwxr-xr-- /HIGH_LEVEL_DIR/SUBDIR1

cd /HIGH_LEVEL_DIR/SUBDIR1
ls -la
-rwxr-xr-- file1
-rwxr-xr-- file2

On AIX,
However, if user C wants to go to the subdir /HIGH_LEVEL_DIR/SUBDIR1 , we get user C does not have privileges.

So if user C wants to go to the dir "/HIGH_LEVEL_DIR/SUBDIR1", he/she gets permission denied privileges.

ls -la /HIGH_LEVEL_DIR
drwxr-xr-- /HIGH_LEVEL_DIR/SUBDIR1


If the dir access becomes

rwxr-xr-x then user can do a "Change dir (cd)" command to /HIGH_LEVEL_DIR/SUBDIR1 .

Now if he tries to read the file /HIGH_LEVEL_DIR/SUBDIR1/file1, he gets the error that user does not have enough privileges to read the file, file1.

So what is wrong here??

---------- Post updated at 12:19 AM ---------- Previous update was at 12:04 AM ----------

Do we need just 755 at /HIGH_LEVEL_DIR/SUBDIR1 level and 754 at file levels??

All sub-directories to the file a user wants to read must have at least read and execute permission (whether it's for the owner, a group member, or someone else).

So in your case

ls -ld HIGH_LEVEL_DIR
drwxr-xr-x .... HIGH_LEVEL_DIR

ls -ld HIGH_LEVEL_DIR/SUBDIR1
drwxr-xr-x .... HIGH_LEVEL_DIR/SUBDIR1