Owner can read, write and execute. Group can do nothing. Others can do nothing.
| Read | Write | Execute | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Owner | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Group | – | – | – |
| Others | – | – | – |
Typical use
Private folders and scripts that only you may run.
Good to know
700 (rwx------) means only the owner can read, write and run a file, or list and enter a folder. It is the expected mode for ~/.ssh: with StrictModes, the default, sshd refuses key logins when ~/.ssh or the home folder is writable by others, and GnuPG warns about unsafe permissions unless ~/.gnupg is 700. On private scripts it stops other users reading or running them.
On a folder, 700 hides everything inside, even files with 644, because nobody else can traverse it. That is why a web server can’t serve files from a home folder set to 700; Ubuntu has created new home folders as 750 since 21.04. root bypasses these checks anyway. A umask of 077 creates everything private: files as 600 and folders as 700.
Commands
| Set the mode | chmod 700 file |
|---|---|
| The same with letters | chmod u=rwx,g=,o= file |
| A folder and everything in it | chmod -R 700 folder |
| Only the folders inside | find folder -type d -exec chmod 700 {} + |
| How ls -l shows it | -rwx------ |