UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I recently purchased an account at a web host provider.
When I logged into my file system for the first time to check the file permissions, I noticed that the file permissions on the www folder where like this:

drwxr-x---

The index.html file was in the www folder as expected.

If I have understood right, "the world", that means all the unknown people who visit my web page, usually belongs to "other". With file permissions set like this, I expected that no one could access my web page, but I still could access it when I pointed my browser to my domain!!??

I guess the reason is that "the world" belongs to "group" rather than "other"......or ?

Any ideas why my web host provider has set up the permissions like this ? Is this a security problem ?


Thanks
Regards
Victor Haugen

If you're really worried about it, contact the provider. But since the files are being stored on a server on someone else's computer (your provider's), you owning the folder on their computer doesn't mean anything different happens on your computer when you type in the url. Type the url http://whatever/your/site/is into your browser; if you can see the page, so can anyone else visiting your site.

What worries me is that "The whole world" belongs to "group" .... rather than "other".


Victor

No, it just means that the webserver process belongs to the group. You didn't state which group owns your directory, but it might be called, for example, "web". The webserver is probably running as user "apache" or similar -- you will find that user is also a member of group "web".

Hope that helps.

Ok, thanks! Now, I understand


Victor