updating windows vista file permissions with Icacls

I'm not much of a windows guy, but I have a vista machine at home as the main PC. I recently bought a NAS to backup important files and found that my backup jobs were failing due to file permission issues (there are multiple accounts on the PC). I wanted to do the equivalent of chmod +r (or even 777) on a few files but didn't want the hassle of using windows explorer to adjust the file perms one at a time (I'd already tried changing permissions for the root folder and applying these to the contained files and sub-dirs, but it didn't work. I guess it was something to do with the fact that the permissions weren't uniform for the files in the dirs).

Anyway, it seems you use Icacls for updating file permissions and you can do it recursively with the /T flag. So for a single file you do this:

> Icacls <filename> /grant <user>:<perm>

e.g. This grants full control to user 'Paul' on file 'test.txt'

c:\> Icacls test.txt /grant Paul:F

and for a dir you do this:

c:\Icacls <dirname> /T /grant <user>:<perm>

e.g.

c:\> Icacls c:\testdir /grant Paul:F