What does the permission string lrwxrwxrwx mean?
The leading l
indicates that this file is a symlink, in contrast to -
which indicates a regular file, d
which indicates a directory, and other less common prefixes.
A symlink is type of file which only contains a link to another file. Reading a symlink reads the real file. Writing to a symlink writes to the real file. cd
ing to a symlink that is to a directory results in behaviour almost identical to what would happen if you had cd
'd into the real directory.
The permission bits are displayed as rwxrwxrwx
. All symlinks show these bits, but they are "dummy permissions". The actual (or effective) permissions of a symlink are the permissions of the real file it links to. You can get the real permissions (and file type) by running stat
on the symlink, for example:
$ stat -Lc '%a %A' /initrd.img
644 -rw-r--r--
stat
read file metadata-L
dereference (follow) symlinks-c
select output according to specified string%a
octal permissions%A
"human readable" permissions