[Fwd: [luau] Unwanted Perrmissions Changes - Drake 8.2]

[W. Wayne Liauh]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [luau] Unwanted Perrmissions Changes - Drake 8.2
Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 16:30:43 -1000
From: "W. Wayne Liauh" <LiauhW001 at Hawaii.rr.com>
To: "W. Wayne Liauh" <LiauhW001 at hawaii.rr.com>



I was forwarded some of the discussions on this subject.  I don't want 
anyone to get the impression that all of us in Hawaii believe that 
Mandrake will, sua sponte, "add" permissions to certain files.  It will 
never do that.  (To think any Linux distro, especially a major distro 
like Mandrake, will do that, is an insult to our collective intelligence.)

All "msec" does, as far as permissions are concerned, is to take away 
the "write" permission for non-owners.  When Mandrake creates a new user 
account, it also creates a corresponding new group, thus, the default 
umask=022 is applied.  OTOH, if my memory serves me correctly, Red Hat 
lumps all users into the same group (unless you change it).  Thus Red 
Hat uses the default umask=002.  There is nothing sexy about msec.

Konqueror, however, can create some problems (because it is always too 
new and relatively untested), especially if you run it in the root mode. 
 I have noticed that Konqueror sometimes can "corrupt" a file.  For 
example, if you use Konqueror in the root mode to copy or move a file, 
the ownership will change to root (this is expected, and Konqueror does 
not seem to have an option to retain the ownership, etc., as MC does). 
 Then you use the "property" dialog to change its ownership to whoever 
you want it to belong to.  I have noticed that the permission of such a 
file can change to something that I could not recognize.  Apparently, 
Konqueror may have corrupted at least the attribute portion of that 
file.  Exactly as to how this might have happened, I have no idea.

Permission is one of the most important part of Linux/Unix.  Even 
Microsoft recognizes that.  Unless someone wants to stick to Win98, 
which has no security whatsoever, there is no escape from the permission 
issue (unless you run everything as root, as most Windows only know how 
to do).  Personally, I believe the permission feature implemented in 
Win2K and beyond is no comparison to Linux.  (Many in this forum 
probably still have memories of VMS vs. Unix; I believe the superior 
permission design of Unix vis-a-vis anything else, is one of the reasons 
resulting in VMS being almost completely wiped out from earth--and 
morphed into WinNT/2K/XP.)



http://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/pipermail/luau/2002-May/008011.html



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