From owner-freebsd-security  Tue Aug 31 20:14:50 1999
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Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1999 13:14:38 +1000
From: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
Message-Id: <199909010314.NAA11599@godzilla.zeta.org.au>
To: ftobin@uiuc.edu, gjb-freebsd@gba.oz.au
Subject: Re: Not sure if you got it...
Cc: freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG
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>The thing that is really wrong with the flags is the absurd
>names they have been given as in these two examples:
>
>  * nodump sets a flag, dump unsets it
>  * uchg sets a flag, nouchg unsets it
>
>It would have made much more sense if the second one was changed
>so that:
>
>  * nodump still sets a flag, while dump unsets it
>  * nouchg sets a flag ("user flag for no change"), uchg unsets it

The immutable flags are well named in the kernel.  You can still spell
the user immutable flag as `immutable' in chflags(8), but ls(1) will
print it as `uchg'.  The only purpose of the bad abbreviations seems
to be to limit line lengths in ls -lo listings.

Bruce


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