diff --git a/puppet/zulip/manifests/tornado_sharding.pp b/puppet/zulip/manifests/tornado_sharding.pp
index 5720cad6e9..7c48526a66 100644
--- a/puppet/zulip/manifests/tornado_sharding.pp
+++ b/puppet/zulip/manifests/tornado_sharding.pp
@@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ class zulip::tornado_sharding {
     require => User['zulip'],
     owner   => 'zulip',
     group   => 'zulip',
-    mode    => '0640',
+    mode    => '0644',
     content => "{}\n",
     replace => false,
   }
diff --git a/scripts/refresh-sharding-and-restart b/scripts/refresh-sharding-and-restart
index 76996cddf3..e0ef948575 100755
--- a/scripts/refresh-sharding-and-restart
+++ b/scripts/refresh-sharding-and-restart
@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ set -e
 chown root:root /etc/zulip/nginx_sharding.conf.tmp
 chmod 644 /etc/zulip/nginx_sharding.conf.tmp
 chown zulip:zulip /etc/zulip/sharding.json.tmp
-chmod 640 /etc/zulip/sharding.json.tmp
+chmod 644 /etc/zulip/sharding.json.tmp
 mv /etc/zulip/nginx_sharding.conf.tmp /etc/zulip/nginx_sharding.conf
 mv /etc/zulip/sharding.json.tmp /etc/zulip/sharding.json