powershell add user permission to a folder in windows server - powershell

Question

So I've got the next path: C:\folder1\folder2\fileName. Looking in the security tab on the C:\folder1 there is Alice username with full permissions. But going to the C:\folder1\folder2\fileName Alice isn't there yet. How can I insert with powershell v2 Alice member recursively in C:\folder1 so that all the files under root C:\folder1 will also have the same Alice username set with full permissions.
I've tried:
$acl = Get-Acl C:\folder1
$permission = "domain\Alice","FullControl","Allow"
$accessRule = New-Object System.Security.AccessControl.FileSystemAccessRule $permission
$acl.SetAccessRule($accessRule)
$acl | Set-Acl C:\folder1
But it doesn't seem to apply for the C:\folder1\folder1\fileName. Guess I'm trying to apply permissions for Alice, which doesn't exist yet in the last fileName item.

Answer 1

As you can see in the FileSystemAccessRule documentation, the class has a property for inheritance.
You have to add the property to your $permission
$permission = "domain\Alice",
"FullControl",
[System.Security.AccessControl.InheritanceFlags]"ContainerInherit",
[system.security.accesscontrol.PropagationFlags]"None",
"Allow"
$accessRule = New-Object System.Security.AccessControl.FileSystemAccessRule $permission

Answer 2

You could also recursively add the permissions by getting all child items with the Get-ChildItems cmdlet and piping them to the Set-Acl cmdlet like they have done in an examle in the documentation on microsoft site here: Set-Acl. Look at "Example 3: Apply a security descriptor to multiple files" or read below (copied from the page):
PS C:\> $NewAcl = Get-Acl File0.txt
PS C:\> Get-ChildItem -Path "C:\temp" -Recurse -Include "*.txt" -Force | Set-Acl - AclObject $NewAcl
These commands apply the security descriptors in the File0.txt file to all text files in the C:\Temp directory and all of its subdirectories.
The first command gets the security descriptor of the File0.txt file in the current directory and uses the assignment operator (=) to store it in the $NewACL variable.
The first command in the pipeline uses the Get-ChildItem cmdlet to get all of the text files in the C:\Temp directory. The Recurse parameter extends the command to all subdirectories of C:\temp. The Include parameter limits the files retrieved to those with the ".txt" file name extension. The Force parameter gets hidden files, which would otherwise be excluded. (You cannot use "c:\temp*.txt", because the -Recurse parameter works on directories, not on files.)
The pipeline operator (|) sends the objects representing the retrieved files to the Set-Acl cmdlet, which applies the security descriptor in the AclObject parameter to all of the files in the pipeline.
In practice, it is best to use the Whatif parameter with all Set-Acl commands that can affect more than one item. In this case, the second command in the pipeline would be "Set-Acl -AclObject $NewAcl -WhatIf". This command lists the files that would be affected by the command. After reviewing the result, you can run the command again without the Whatif parameter.
This is an example using ".txt" files but can be modified to apply to directories as well.