HEELPBOOK - Microsoft Windows - How to use CACLS ##############

Cacls command can be used to display or modify access control list (ACLs) of files. Below you can find few examples of cacls command for various scenarios. 


######### Find the access permissions of a file ############

We can run the below command to print the access permissions of a file.


cacls filename


Example:


c:\>cacls data.txt
c:\data.txt NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM:F
            BUILTIN\Administrators:F
            WINCMD-PC\John:F
c:\>


######### Change access permissions of a file ############

There are two ways you can modify the access permissions of a file. The first method is to replace the existing access permissions where as the second one is to edit the existing permissions.

Replace existing access permissions:

We can use /P switch to replace the existing permissions. The syntax of this command is as below:


cacls filename /P user1:permissions  user2:permissions user3:permissions [user4:permissions ........]


The existing permissions will be replaced with the ones specified in the above command. To illustrate the use of this /P switch, let’s modify the access permissions of the file data.txt shown in the above example.


c:\>cacls data.txt
c:\data.txt WINCMD-PC\John:F
           NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM:F
           BUILTIN\Administrators:F

c:\>cacls data.txt /P BUILTIN\Administrators:R
Are you sure (Y/N)?y
processed file: c:\data.txt

c:\>cacls data.txt
c:\data.txt BUILTIN\Administrators:R


As you can see, we have not specified anything about the user John with the /P switch. 

Since the /P flag replaces the permissions, after executing the command, data.txt will not have any access permissions for the user John.



########## Edit access permissions for a user #############

The second method allows to modify access permissions for a user without impacting other users permissions. 

We can use /E switch for this.

For example, in the above case, let’s give user John only read permission and keep the same permissions for other users. The command for this is:


c:\>cacls files.txt
c:\files.txt NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM:F
             BUILTIN\Administrators:F
             WINCMD-PC\John:F
c:\>cacls files.txt /E /P WINCMD-PC\John:R
processed file: c:\files.txt
c:\>cacls files.txt
c:\files.txt NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM:F
             BUILTIN\Administrators:F
             WINCMD-PC\John:R


############ ARTICLE INFO #############

Article Month: March
Article Date: 21/03/2012
Permalink: http://heelpbook.altervista.org/2012/microsoft-windows-how-to-use-cacls/
Source: http://www.windows-commandline.com/2011/12/cacls-command-examples.html
Language: English

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