Limiting Access to your Home Directory

For old accounts, the default was to leave home directories and newly created files at 755 (user:rwx group:r-x other:r-x). We have changed the default behavior for new students to:

• 711 on the home directory (the -11 of 711 is because the www-data user needs to be able to get to your public_html folder and this is the easiest way for many reasons)
• 700 as the default for files created within the home directory
• 755 on the public_html directory
• 755 as the default for files created within the public_html directory

If you would like to adopt the new behavior, please run the following commands. Note that it may take a while depending on the number of files in your home directory.

cd "${HOME}"

find . -not -type l -not -path "./public_html*" -exec chmod o-rwx {} \;
find . -not -type l -not -path "./public_html*" -exec chmod g-rwx {} \;
find . -type d -not -path "./public_html*" -exec setfacl -d -m u::rwx,g::-,o::- {} \;
chmod o+x .
chmod g+x .