What does a + mean at the end of the permissions from ls -l?

Question

What is the plus sign at the end of the permissions telling me?

ls -l
total 4
drwxrwxrwx+ 2 benson avahi-autoipd 4096 Jan 27 17:37 docs

Here's the context:

cat /etc/issue
\CentOS release 5.3 (Final)
Kernel \r on an \m

Mikel · Accepted Answer · 2019-07-07T22:29:08.813

205

It means your file has extended permissions called ACLs.

You have to run getfacl <file> to see the full permissions.

See Access Control Lists for more details.

edited Jul 07 '19 at 22:29

answered Jan 27 '11 at 22:54

Mikel

3,957

26

ls -le on Mac OS X. http://serverfault.com/a/303752/63749 – ma11hew28 Oct 25 '15 at 14:15
1

Synology NAS (DSM6.2) also support ls -le to show syno-acl permission details – yurenchen Feb 02 '23 at 23:13

score 43 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 27 '11 at 22:49

43

via man page 'ls'

"If the file or directory has extended security information, the permissions field printed by the -l option is followed by a '+' character."

This generally means the file is encumbered with access restrictions outside of the traditional Unix permissions - likely Access Control List (ACL).

answered Jan 27 '11 at 22:49

San

543

2

"encumbered with access restrictions" - does that mean that a file or directory without a + has less restrictions? – squarecandy Mar 22 '16 at 22:00
10

@squarecandy : No, the + can remove restrictions (so add permissions). For example, in the current Ubuntu default, when you plug in an external drive, it gets mounted in /media/{yourusername}/, but the permissions on /media/{yourusername} are drwxr-x---+ and the owner and group are both root, so you'd expect nobody besides root to be able to do anything with anything in there. But the ACL says user:{yourusername}:r-x, so in fact you do have access (but none of the other users do). – Toby Bartels Sep 26 '17 at 05:34
5

FYI, strangely on Debian's man ls page (GNU coreutils 8.26) it doesn't mention that usage of +, but info coreutils ls does – Xen2050 Oct 29 '18 at 12:58
What can it mean "not generally"? :) I do not have the acl package installed, can it be acl nonetheless or is there something else this could indicate? – Felix Oct 13 '21 at 06:01
The ls man page from coreutils 8.30 in RHEL 8.3 does not contain the string "extended". – RonJohn Feb 18 '22 at 20:38

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 29 '23 at 15:52

From the acl package in Ubuntu :

$ man acl | grep -1 '+'
     •   For files that have a default ACL or an access ACL that contains more than the three required ACL entries, the ls(1) utility in the long form produced by ls -l
         displays a plus sign (+) after the permission string.
$

What does a + mean at the end of the permissions from ls -l?

3 Answers3