Allowing access to files but not the directory they are in is incompatible. Permissions along the line of 755 would allow the file access you want. As you suspect you are the owner. Groups are collections of user accounts that can be given their own permissions. For Example, a group called "finance" could include all users of a finance area who would have their own files they could use where another group "workers" would not allowed. Others is the rest of the world. When people refer to permissions like 755 They represent the permissions in owner,group,other order. Is this a perl free zone? :-)