Is this a bug? File permissions and ext4 [SOLVED]

[ronin701]

I was setting file/directory permissions, specifically I wanted to remove execute permissions from a directory and it's contents and I found something interesting that I didn't see in previous file systems.
If I chmod 644 it works fine on a specific file, allowing user rw, group and others r, but if I chmod -R 644 \mydirector it removes the users access to the directory, I also tried a-x recursive with the same result????
In the Info Properties GUI it shows; owner - List, create/delete, no access, group - List files only, Others - List files only.
Kinda weird!
Anybody else come across this or have a workaround?
BTW, I'm running Mint 13 Mate edition and it's fantastic, big whooyaa to the development team..........
-F

Thanks for the info, missed the subtle difference between folder execution and file execution.
I guess this is one place where the Info Properties GUI is more useful than the terminal, I can uncheck execute, apply permissions to enclosed files and be on my happy way (as long as there are no contained directories of course)<G>.
-F

[xenopeek]

Read up a bit on Linux filesystem permissions For example here: https://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/3 ... ermissions

The execute bit on a directory controls whether you can browse the contents of the directory, not whether you can execute it

[altair4]

And just in case you are tempted to go to the opposite extreme and do the following:

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chmod -R 755 /mydirector

That's not right either since you will not only set directories to be executable, which you must have, but also every file which you probably don't want to have.

The octal mode in chmod isn't smart enough to differentiate between a folder and a file so I would suggest something like the following:

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chmod -R a+rwX,go-w /mydirectory

Every folder will be executable, group and other will be read only, owner has full access, but files will not be set to executable unless they were that way to begin with. That's what the big "X" does.