Changing File System Permissions and Ownership in Powershell David Eisner <deisner[ at ]gmail.com> 10/17/2008 3:10:53 PM I'd like to change NTFS file system permissions using Powershell, both at the command line and from a Powershell script. I come from the Unix world, where it's pretty straightforward: To change ownership, you use the 'chown' command, and to change permissions, you use either 'chmod' or 'setfacl'. How would I do the same thing in Powershell? I'd like to be able to do this locally (on a Windows Server 2003 box), and hopefully remotely (from a Windows XP client, say). Googling around, I see many different discussions threads, with conflicting information about how you might do it (try this script I wrote, download this utility, etc.), or whether it's even possible to change the owner to a non-Administrative user account using anything other than the security tab in the GUI. I'm surprised such a basic operation is such a fertile topic for discussion and debate. Powershell is pretty cool, and I'm hoping I can use it to accomplish my task. Thanks in advance! -David

Re: Changing File System Permissions and Ownership in Powershell "Joe Acosta" <jacosta[ at ]san.rr.com> 10/21/2008 5:15:06 PM David, From a regular shell (not power shell), type xcacls /? and see if the options available work for you. For remotely executing commands on systems, take a look at psexec.exe which is included in pstools.zip. Note that there are several "unix-y" (unix-ish?) utilities within the zip file. Download for free at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896649.aspx Joe A "David Eisner" <deisner[ at ]gmail.com> wrote in message news:909c9122-8d40-4b4c-947d-e36093e556ae[ at ]l76g2000hse.googlegroups.com... [Quoted Text] > I'd like to change NTFS file system permissions using Powershell, both > at the command line and from a Powershell script. > > I come from the Unix world, where it's pretty straightforward: To > change ownership, you use the 'chown' command, and to change > permissions, you use either 'chmod' or 'setfacl'. > > How would I do the same thing in Powershell? I'd like to be able to > do this locally (on a Windows Server 2003 box), and hopefully remotely > (from a Windows XP client, say). > > Googling around, I see many different discussions threads, with > conflicting information about how you might do it (try this script I > wrote, download this utility, etc.), or whether it's even possible to > change the owner to a non-Administrative user account using anything > other than the security tab in the GUI. I'm surprised such a basic > operation is such a fertile topic for discussion and debate. > > Powershell is pretty cool, and I'm hoping I can use it to accomplish > my task. > > Thanks in advance! > > -David