Question

You have just created a document called letter.doc and want to change the access permissions so that people in your group can read and write to it. After your change in permissions, the directory listing shows -rwxrwxr-. What is wrong with the new permissions?

Ordinary files do not need execute permissions.
This is a trick question. Only the root can change file permissions.
People in your group cannot read it.
Your filename is invalid for the group it belongs to.

Answer 1

The permissions -rwxrwxr- incorrectly include execute permissions for an ordinary file, letter.doc. The correct permissions should be -rw-rw-r-- (664), allowing user and group read and write access without execute permissions.

Step-by-step explanation:

The issue with the new permissions set on the file letter.doc (-rwxrwxr-) is that the execute permissions (x) are set for both the user/group and others. Normally, ordinary files, such as documents, do not require execute permissions. The execute permission is generally reserved for scripts and programs that need to be run or executed. The correct permissions for a document to allow the group to read and write would be -rw-rw-r--. This allows the user and group to read and write to the file, but not execute it, and it allows everyone else to only read the file.

To change the permissions to the correct setting, you can use the chmod command in the terminal. For example, chmod 664 letter.doc would set the correct permissions. The information about only root being able to change file permissions is incorrect; any file owner can change the permissions of their files. Additionally, the filename letter.doc is perfectly valid and does not influence the group permissions.