Setting permissions on directories in Windows Vista

Lots of times, when installing web applications, you need to make specific directories writable by all users (in particular, the user running Apache). By default, though, this isn’t the case when you create directories in Windows. And the Properties window has a “Read Only” checkbox, but setting it has never seemed to work for me.

I found this workaround. It involves cygwin; perhaps there’s a simpler way.

1. Right-click the directory and go to Properties.
2. Click the Security tab
3. Highlight “Everyone” and click the Edit button
4. Click “Allow” for full control
5. OK out
6. Now, with cygwin, you can set the permissions on that directory (e.g., “chmod 777 -R /path/to/my/directory”)

That’s it.

UPDATE (10/7/09):

I noticed today that this doesn’t always seem to recursively set the permissions. You can do the same thing command-line at an Admin prompt:

cacls c:\path\to\directory /T /G Everyone:F