How to recursively change the File’s Permissions using chmod and find in Linux

The syntax for recursively changing the file permission using chmod command is:

chmod -R [permission] [directory]

For eg, sudo chmod -R 755 test-directory

The syntax using the find command to locate files/directories and then passing it on to chmod to set the permission:

Using the numeric method:

find <location> -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
find <location> -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

For eg,

find /var/www/html -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
find /var/www/html -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

Using the symbolic method:

find <location> -type d -exec chmod u=rwx,go=rx {} \;
find <location> -type f -exec chmod u=rw,go=r {} \;

For eg,

find /var/www/html -type d -exec chmod u=rwx,go=rx {} \;
find /var/www/html -type f -exec chmod u=rw,go=r {} \;

If you use the find command with -exec, the chmod command will run for each found entry.
You can use the xargs command to speed up the operation by passing multiple entries at once:

For eg,

find /var/www/html -type d -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 755
find /var/www/html -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 644

The syntax for changing the permission of a specific file type in a directory is:

find [directory] -name "*.[filename_extension]" -exec chmod [privilege] {} \;

For eg,

find . -name “*.txt” -exec chmod +x {} \;