How do access rights work in Linux?

In Linux, access rights determine who can perform what operations on files and directories. Each file is assigned three sets of permissions for three categories of users:

• Owner (user)
• Group (group)
• Others (others)

Permissions are of three types:

• Read (r) — permission to read the contents of the file or list files in a directory
• Write (w) — permission to modify the file or the contents of a directory
• Execute (x) — permission to run the file as a program or enter the directory

Permissions are displayed as rwxrwxrwx, where each set of three characters corresponds to permissions for user, group, and others respectively.

For example, the command chmod 755 file sets permissions to rwxr-xr-x:

• Owner can read, write, and execute
• Group and others can read and execute

Access rights are controlled by the kernel and affect system security and resource access management.