What does a c preceding permissions indicate?

Question

I'm trying to figure out what kind of files I'm dealing with on a partition of a device as part of a security investigation. This partition has a filesystem type of 'none' according to df. There are a number of files with crw-rw---- or other ugo permssions. I'm trying to figure out what c means. I know that d indicates a directory and l indicates a symlink from experience. I'm also seeing some preceded with b.

Overall, the most helpful thing would probably be a chart explaining all the different characters that can appear here and what they mean. I've not been able to find anything like that.

Man I forgot how much I hated this site. – jaredad7 Jul 14 '23 at 12:58 — jaredad7, Jul 14 '23 at 12:58

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 13 '23 at 21:30

0

The c represents a character device such as a mouse, speaker, webcam, etc that transfers data in bits or bytes which are also know as characters hence the c.

answered Jul 13 '23 at 21:30

Nasir Riley

11,422

zer0 · Answer 2 · 2023-07-13T22:14:35.690

0

man ls will give you the chart of "-l" entries. These will be the first column in your ls -l listing.

       -     Regular file.
       b     Block special file.
       c     Character special file.
       d     Directory.
       l     Symbolic link.
       p     FIFO.
       s     Socket.
       w     Whiteout.

edited Jul 13 '23 at 22:14

answered Jul 13 '23 at 21:47

zer0

1

man ls didn't give me the entries, it was the first thing I checked. – jaredad7 Jul 14 '23 at 12:56
@jaredad7, what system are you running? It seems concerning that your man page doesn't show that information. – zer0 Jul 18 '23 at 15:01

What does a c preceding permissions indicate?

2 Answers2