how to use getfacl command with its examples

The getfacl command is used to retrieve and print the Access Control Lists (ACLs) of a file or directory. ACLs provide more fine-grained permissions apart from the traditional file permissions (read, write, execute) used by the operating systems.

  • About getfacl : To get file access control lists
  • It comes from “acl-2.2.49” package.

Examples:

1. To get the ACL’s of a file

$ getfacl /tmp/test.txt

2. To display the file access control list

$ getfacl -a /tmp/file.txt
$ getfacl –access /tmp/file.txt 

3. To display the default access control list

$ getfacl -d /tmp/file.txt
$ getfacl –default /tmp/file.txt 

4. To avoid displaying comment header

$ getfacl -c /tmp/file.txt
$ getfacl –omit-header /tmp/file.txt

5. To Print all effective rights comments

$ getfacl -e /tmp/file.txt
$ getfacl –all-effective /tmp/file.txt 

6. To avoid printing effective rights

$ getfacl -E /tmp/file.txt
$ getfacl –no-effective /tmp/file.txt

 7. To skip files that only have the base ACL entries

$ getfacl -s /tmp/file.txt
$ getfacl –skip-base /tmp/file.txt 

8. To list the ACL’s recursively

$ getfacl -R /tmp
$ getfacl –recursive /tmp 

9. To follow the symbolic links

$ getfacl -L /tmp/file.txt
$ getfacl –logical /tmp/file.txt 

10. To avoid following the symbolic links

$ getfacl -P /tmp/file.txt
$ getfacl –physical /tmp/file.txt 

11. To get the tabular output format

$ getfacl -t /tmp/file.txt
$ getfacl –tabular /tmp/file.txt 

12. Do not strip leading slash characters

$ getfacl -p /tmp/file.txt
$ getfacl –absolute-names /tmp/file.txt 

13. To list the numeric user and group IDs

$ getfacl -n /tmp/file.txt
$ getfacl –numeric /tmp/file.txt 

14. To get the version of the getfacl

$ getfacl -v
$ getfacl -version 

15. To get the help for getfacl

$ getfacl -h
$ getfacl –help 

Related Commands: setfacl, acl 

getfacl command not found

While checking, you may get the message as “getfacl command not found”, then it means you do no have the “acl” package installed on your system. Please follow below instructions to get that installed.

OS VersionCommand to install
RedHat / CentOSyum install acl
Debian / Ubuntuapt install acl

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