Magento Resetting File Permissions

Here’s how to reset your file and directory permissions if PHP is running through FastCGI, suPHP, or LSAPI:
find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
chmod 550 pear
chmod 550 mage #for magento 1.5+
If PHP is running as a module (DSO), you will need to do this:
#for magento 1.5+
find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
chmod o+w var var/.htaccess app/etc
chmod 550 mage
chmod -R o+w media
If you are running Pre 1.5 you can copy and paste this
find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
chmod o+w var var/.htaccess app/etc
chmod 550 pear
chmod -R o+w media
The above commands need to be executed from the root directory where Magento is installed.
Note that the wiki software on this site seems to have some sort of double escaping issue that keeps removing the backslash before ; at the end of the ‘find . -type …’ lines. Every time you edit this page, you’ll have to restore them by making sure there are three slashes before each semicolon that should have a backslash before it! See http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/find-missing-argument-to-%60-exec-308111/ for details.
If you do not have access to SSH:
Download Magento Cleanup Tool
Unzip magento-cleanup.php to the root directory where Magento is installed.
Browse to http://yourdomain.com/magento/magento-cleanup.php
!!! In Magento Version 1.5. you need to change magento-cleanup.php:
Edit:
chmod(“pear”, 550);
Into:
chmod(“lib/PEAR”, 550);
[Added by Pedro Machado on 2011/07/05] I got errors with the SSH option above, so you may need like me to cleanup session and cache folders:
rm -rf var/cache/*
rm -rf var/session/*
And set the var folder to 755:
chmod 755 -R var