A command to check file access permission for another user

Question

I need to know how to check the effective file access permissions for a given user, but it takes long to do this manually starting from / up to the target file or directory, checking group, ...etc.

Answer 1

From what I see, the only ways would be to either do what you describe, check each of the permissions sets against the effective user/group. Or you could try to set up sudo to be able to take test(1).

sudo -u luser test -x ~juser/bin/myprogram

Like you said, check the effective user/groups permissions:

:

# called as $0 usertocheck pathname {r|w|x}
# for example, permcheck luser ~juser/bin/myprogrm x
# displays either "root", "user", "groups", "other" or "none"
user=$1
file=$2
smode=$3
# if user has no access from state, an empty string is returned, fuid,
# fgid and fmode would become empty strings as well; the end result is
# always showing 'none' even if $user has access (except $user == 'root')
set -- $(stat -L -c '%u %g %a' $file 2>&-)
awk -f $tmpawk \
    -veuid="$(id -u $user)" \
    -vgrp="$(id -G $user)" \
    -vfuid="$1" \
    -vfgid="$2" \
    -vfmode="$(echo ibase=8\;$3 | bc)" \
    -vsmode="$smode" \
'BEGIN {
  if (euid == 0) { print "root"; exit; }
  split(grp,Groups);
  omode = fmode % 8; gmode = int(fmode / 8 % 8);
  umode = int(fmode / 64 % 8);
  # set up tests
  # these could be function, but not all version of awk has a function
  # statement
  if (smode == "r") {
    utest = int(umode / 4);
    gtest = int(gmode / 4);
    otest = int(omode / 4);
  }
  if (smode == "w") {
    utest = int(umode / 2 % 2);
    gtest = int(gmode / 2 % 2);
    otest = int(omode / 2 % 2);
  }
  if (smode == "x") {
    utest = (int(umode >= 4) && umode % 2);
    gtest = (int(gmode >= 4) && gmode % 2);
    otest = (int(omode >= 4) && omode % 2);
  }
  if (utest && fuid == euid) { print "user"; exit; }
  for (idx in Groups) {
    if (gtest && Groups[idx] == fgid) { print "group"; exit; }
  }
  if (otest) { print "other"; exit; }
  print "none";
}
'

On my Ubuntu 11.04 system, running this script takes about 16ms, on average. Also, stat does not need read/execute per

Answer 2

Would the stat command do the tick?