Linux - How to recursively chmod a folder?

Question

How can I recursively chmod everything inside of a folder?

e.g. I have a folder called var which contains many subfolders and files.

How can I apply chmod 755 recursively to this folder and all its contents?

Answer 1

Please refer to the manual (man chmod):

-R, --recursive
change files and directories recursively

chmod -R 755 /path/to/directory would perform what you want.

However…

1. You don't usually want to 755 all files; these should be 644, as they often do not need to be executable. Hence, you could do find /path/to/directory -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \; to only change directory permissions. Use -type f and chmod 644 to apply the permissions to files.

2. This will overwrite any existing permissions. It's not a good idea to do it for /var — that folder has the correct permissions set up by the system already. For example, some directories in /var require 775 permissions (e.g., /var/log).

So, before doing sudo chmod — particularly on system folders — pause and think about whether that is really required.