What are the default file permissions for the home folder?
Solution 1:
Mine says
root45@Ubuntu:~$ ls -dl
drwxr-xr-x 31 root45 root45 4096 2011-10-31 14:06 .
Solution 2:
I have always thought it is easier to deal numerically rather than alphabetically. An 'R' equates to 4, an 'W' to 2 and e(X)ecute to 1. The standard permissions in a directory equate to 755, which evaluates to read, write, execute for the owner (4 + 2 + 1), read and execute for the group (4 + 1) and read and execute for other. There are other permissions that might be assigned such as the sticky bit etc, but I won't go into them. To set the permissions you could just use a chmod 755 * in the directory. If there are hidden files, those starting with a period, you could try chmod 755 .*
Alan