[mr.dan.watson]

I did the command ls -la / which gave me some permissions I don't understand. I know R is read W is write X is execute but what does D, L and T mean, and what is sticky bit, and why does "T" take the place of x?

[Tomchu]

D = directory
L = symbolic link
Sticky bit = "Usage" section here: Sticky bit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

By the way ... if you add the "-G" option to ls commands, you get colorized output, which makes things considerably easier to visualize. Here's my Terminal:

[mr.dan.watson]

Dangit I should of known that, I should of used the information on the far right of terminal to understand what d and l is. LOL

Thanks
Dan

[Chuckit]

Erm…what? That information isn't actually in the Terminal. His Terminal window is semi-transparent and his post is showing through.

[mr.dan.watson]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

Erm…what? That information isn't actually in the Terminal. His Terminal window is semi-transparent and his post is showing through.

I'm not talking about the information under the terminal Im talking about the information thats IN the terminal on the far right side where is says the file names and extensions and directories.

Name is dan btw

[Hal Itosis]

Originally Posted by mr.dan.watson 

what is sticky bit, and why does "T" take the place of x?

It "takes the place of [the last] x" because the 10-character display convention
got overloaded... as more "states" were invented. Rather than add more chars,
they decided to get tricky.

The sticky bit was originally created for files. Look at: ls -l /var/vm/swapfile0
It means (meant?): once loaded, keep this puppy handy (somewhere in memory).

Later (and more popularly) it got applied to directories as well... but, there it says:
only owners can delete their own stuff inside this folder.

[too bad we can't post real (multi-spaced) ascii with code tags... I gotta neat chart]

[mr.dan.watson]

If "T" replaces the last "X" then using ls -l on given files whos octal is 1777 or 1776 is useless because "T" replaces/overlaps "X". How do you get the permissions octal, if thats what their called, of a file? Remove the sticky-bit then ls -l or..?

[Brass]

Uses a capital "T" if it executable ("x") and a lower case "T" if not executable ("-").

Try this on the CLI:

touch blah
chmod 666 blah
ls -l blah
chmod 1666 blah
ls -l blah
chmod 777 blah
ls -l blah
chmod 1777 blah
ls -l blah
rm blah

All will be revealed.