Can a OS Update Modify the Permission in a Directory?

Question

I upgraded my Fedora box a few days ago. I went from Fedora 18, to Fedora 20 using fedup. This morning I noticed that when I tried to delete a zip file from one of my directories, I couldn't. Then I tried to create a directory, and I couldn't. I had to use sudo.

The directory where this is happening is the /var/www/html directory, which is the root directory of my server. Before doing the update I could modify the contents of this directory without any problem. I don't remember, but I may have changed the permission of the directory at some point to allow me to do this. Is it possible that the upgrade modified the permission of the html directory?

Please note that I'm not asking how to gain permission again, I've already modified the permission in the html directory. I just want to know if the reason for this happening was that the upgrade modified the permission on that directory.

Thanks.

Answer 1

The /var/www/html directory on Fedora is owned by the httpd package so yes, if that package got updated, then the permissions for that directory will be reset to whatever the package specifies.