jtara - 4:24 pm on Mar 11, 2008 (gmt 0)

either way i would suggest setting your permissions to 644. that is generally what most hosts also tell you to use.

I hope you meant 600.

644 would give read/write permission to you, and read permission to anyone else.

The corresponding umask for 600 permissions is 0177. umask 0177 will cause all new files where permission are not explicitly set to have permission 600.

Beware of programs that explicitly set permissions! umask alone is not enough.

BTW, I always use the "modern" permission notation to avoid confusion:

chmod u=rw somefile

Sets read and write permissions for the user, and clears all others - equivalent to 600.

Unfortunately, there is no alternate syntax for the umask command.

[edited by: jtara at 4:34 pm (utc) on Mar. 11, 2008]